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VDH on Health Care

Posted on Dimanche 16 août 2009

Obama’s Health Care Mess [Victor Davis Hanson]

Ironies abound in the health-care debate. Bush was pilloried by the Obamanians for (1) not planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq; and (2) not being able to articulate the ends and means of the administration’s war. Yet in the hubris of high ratings, Obama apparently felt that he neither had to present a comprehensive finished blueprint of health-care reform, nor that he or his associates should have to sum it up succinctly and clearly. The result is that most Americans not only do not know what the administration plan is, but sense that their president does not either.

Health care is stalled and insidiously undermining the presidency of Obama precisely because the public senses he has not leveled with the American people. Of the uninsured, how many millions are young people who feel no need right now to buy insurance, how many million are illegal aliens, how many millions chose to use their optional income for things other than a low-cost catastrophic health plan, how many millions still find care outside the insurance system?

Nor do most Americans feel their system is broken. They worry about redundant care, frivolous procedures, and lawsuits, but sense that all in all it can be improved rather than scrapped. They know that Americans with cancer and heart disease survive longer than anywhere else due to superior American care. And they know that longevity is influenced by factors well beyond medical care. The president just as easily could tackle the epidemic of homicides and youth violence, as well as automobile accidents, if his concern really were to ensure that Americans on average lived longer than any others.

Bottom line: too many Americans, whether rightly or wrongly, believe that Obama has other agendas that transcend simply ensuring American live longer, healthier, and better — such as growing government, enforcing an equality of result, and creating permanent constituencies that administer and receive expanding federal entitlements.

And what looms over the entire debate? Debt, debt, debt — both the recognition that one cannot expand those covered and save money at the same time without rationing or higher taxes; and the notion that all Obama’s new entitlements essentially involve borrowing money, much of it from Asia, as our indebtedness soars.

lagrette @ 14:53
Filed under: Politique américaine andPosts in English
Santé : proposition de réforme

Posted on Dimanche 16 août 2009

Cet article s’adresse probalement plus aux Americains de ce forum qu’aux Français, mais la solution proposée par le CEO de Whole Foods à la place de Obamacare, est tres interessante. Ce qui est encore plus interessant c’est la réaction des blogs progressistes US qui ont appelé à un boycott de Whole Foods, parce que le CEO osé être contre la réforme du système de santé telle que les démocrates veulent l’imposer. Whole Foods est une chaine de supermarchés très à la mode chez les bobos, on y touve toute la nourriture bio, les produits new wave, à des prix très élevés. Sa clientèle est très branchée, pro environnement, et surement plus à gauche que la clientèle des supermarches de bases.
The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

By JOHN MACKEY

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”

—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us. (Lire la suite…)

lagrette @ 12:15
Filed under: Généralités
Mark Steyn on Health Care

Posted on Dimanche 16 août 2009

Il examine la notion d’esperance de vie,  qui est un des arguments utilisés pour démontrer la « mauvaise qualité » du système médical US… Et nous promet un article sur les taux de  mortalité infantile.

You’ve Had a Good Innings
Ultimately, government health represents the nationalization of your body.

By Mark Steyn

Some years ago, when I was a slip of a lad, I found myself commiserating with a distinguished American songwriter about the death of one of his colleagues. My 23-year-old girlfriend found all the condolence talk a bit of a bummer and was anxious to cut to the chase and get outta there. “Well,” she said breezily. “He had a good innings. He was 85.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” he said. “I’m 84.”

That’s where Obamacare leads: You’re 84, and it’s easy for him to say. Easy for him to say what you need — or don’t need. Relax, he assured an audience of puffball-lobbing plants in Portsmouth, N.H. . . . By the way, when I mock “puffball-lobbing plants,” obviously all such events are stage-managed, but the trick is to make it not quite so obvious. When Nixon was campaigning in ’68, Roger Ailes used to let a couple of dirty no-good long-haired peaceniks into the room so his candidate could swat ‘em down: It ginned up the crowd, made for better TV, and got the candidate pumped. “Thought it went well tonight,” he’d say. “Really socked it to those hippies.” In essence, Ailes stage-managed it to look un-stage-managed. If those who oppose Obamacare are merely a bunch of “un-American” “evil-mongers” (according to, respectively, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid), the cause would benefit from allowing the president to really sock it to a couple of them once in a while. To retreat behind a wall of overly drooling sycophants does not help Obama at this stage in the game. (Lire la suite…)

lagrette @ 07:20
Filed under: Les idiots inutiles andPolitique américaine andPosts in English