George Will calls it!

January 20, 2010


The Curse of Opportunity

By George Will



"We are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded congresses and presidents for generations."

-- President Barack Obama, Dec. 15, on health care legislation.



Precipice, 1. a headlong fall or descent, esp. to a great depth.

-- Oxford English Dictionary




WASHINGTON -- Trying to guarantee Americans the thrill of the precipice, the president dashed to Massachusetts on Sunday, thereby conceding that he had already lost Tuesday's Senate election, which had become a referendum on his signature program. By promising to cast the decisive 41st vote against the president's health care legislation, the Republican candidate forced all congressional Democrats to contemplate this: Not even frenzied national mobilization of Democratic manpower and millions of dollars could rescue one of the safest Democratic seats in the national legislature from national dismay about the incontinent government expansion, of which that legislation is symptomatic.



Because the legislation is frightening and unpopular, Democrats have had to resort to serial bribery to advance it. Massachusetts voted immediately after the corruption of exempting, until 2018, union members from the tax on high-value health insurance plans. This tax was supposedly the crucial component of what supposedly was reform's primary goal -- reducing costs.



The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., thought Bill Clinton's presidency was crippled by the 1993 decision to pursue health care reform rather than welfare reform. So slight was public enthusiasm for the former, Clinton's program never even came to a vote in either the House or Senate, both controlled by Democrats. There was such fervor for welfare reform that in 1996, after two Clinton vetoes, he finally signed the decade's most important legislation.



In their joyless, tawdry slog toward passage of their increasingly ludicrous bill, Democrats cling grimly to Robert Frost's axiom that "the best way out is always through." Their sole remaining reason for completing the damn thing is that they started it. They seem to have convinced themselves that Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994 because they did not pass an unpopular health bill in 1993. Actually, their 1994 debacle had more to do with the arrogance and malfeasance arising from 40 years of control of the House of Representatives (e.g., the House banking scandal), a provocative crime bill (gun control, federal subsidies for midnight basketball), and other matters.



With one piece of legislation, Obama and his congressional allies have done in one year what it took President Lyndon Johnson and his allies two years to do in 1965 and 1966 -- revive conservatism. Today conservatism is rising on the stepping stones of liberal excesses.



Between FDR's reprimand by voters in the 1938 midterm congressional elections (partly because of his anti-constitutional plan to enlarge and pack the Supreme Court) and LBJ's 1964 trouncing of Barry Goldwater, there was no liberal legislating majority in Congress: Republicans and conservative Democrats combined to temper liberalism's itch to overreach. In 1965 and 1966, however, liberalism was rampant. Today, Democrats worrying about a reprise of 1994 should worry more about a rerun of the 1966 midterm elections, which began a Republican resurgence that presaged victories in seven of the next 10 presidential elections.



The 2008 elections gave liberals the curse of opportunity, and they have used it to reveal themselves ruinously. The protracted health care debacle has highlighted this fact: Some liberals consider the legislation's unpopularity a reason to redouble their efforts to inflict it on Americans who, such liberals think, are too benighted to understand that their betters know best. The essence of contemporary liberalism is the illiberal conviction that Americans, in their comprehensive incompetence, need minute supervision by government, which liberals believe exists to spare citizens the torture of thinking and choosing.



Last week, trying to buttress the bovine obedience of most House Democrats, Obama assured them that if the bill becomes law, "the American people will suddenly learn that this bill does things they like." Suddenly?



If the Democrats' congressional leaders are determined to continue their kamikaze flight to incineration, they will ignore Massachusetts' redundant evidence of public disgust. They will leaven their strategy of briberies with procedural cynicism -- delaying certification of Massachusetts' Senate choice, or misusing "reconciliation" to evade Senate rules, or forcing the House to swallow its last shred of pride in order to rush the Senate bill to the president's desk. Surely any such trickery would be one brick over a load for some hitherto servile members of the Democratic House and Senate caucuses, giving them an excuse to halt their party's Gadarene rush toward the precipice.

Stossel Nails it!

The U.S. House of Presumptuous Meddlers


By John Stossel



As an American, I am embarrassed that the U.S. House of Representatives has 220 members who actually believe the government can successfully centrally plan the medical and insurance industries.



I'm embarrassed that my representatives think that government can subsidize the consumption of medical care without increasing the budget deficit or interfering with free choice.



Receive news alerts



Sign Up



John Stossel RealClearPolitics

Health care



It's a triumph of mindless wishful thinking over logic and experience.



The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by "experts" means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many tradeoffs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.



Government cannot do simple things efficiently. The bureaucrats struggle to count votes correctly. They give subsidized loans to "homeowners" who turn out to be 4-year-olds. Yet congressmen want government to manage our medicine and insurance.



Competition is a "discovery procedure," Nobel-prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek taught. Through the competitive market process, we producers and consumers constantly learn things that force us to adjust our behavior if we are to succeed. Central planners fail for two reasons:



First, knowledge about supply, demand, individual preferences and resource availability is scattered -- much of it never articulated -- throughout society. It is not concentrated in a database where a group of planners can access it.



Second, this "data" is dynamic: It changes without notice.



No matter how honorable the central planners' intentions, they will fail because they cannot know the needs and wishes of 300 million different people. And if they somehow did know their needs, they wouldn't know them tomorrow.



Proponents of so-called reform -- it's not really reform unless it makes things better -- have shamefully avoided criticism of their proposals. Often they just dismiss their opponents as greedy corporate apologists or paranoid right-wing loonies. That's easier than answering questions like these:



1) How can the government subsidize the purchase of medical services without driving up prices? Econ 101 teaches -- without controversy -- that when demand goes up, if other things remain equal, price goes up. The politicians want to have their cake and eat it, too.



2) How can the government promise lower medical costs without restricting choices? Medicare already does that. Once the planners' mandatory insurance pushes prices to new heights, they must put even tougher limits on what we may buy -- or their budget will be even deeper in the red than it already is. As economist Thomas Sowell points out, government cannot really reduce costs. All it can do is disguise and shift costs (through taxation) and refuse to pay for some services (rationing).



3) How does government "create choice" by imposing uniformity on insurers? Uniformity limits choice. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill and the Senate versions, government would dictate to all insurers what their "minimum" coverage policy must include. Truly basic high-deductible, low-cost catastrophic policies tailored to individual needs would be forbidden.



4) How does it "create choice" by making insurance companies compete against a privileged government-sponsored program? The so-called government option, let's call it Fannie Med, would have implicit government backing and therefore little market discipline. The resulting environment of conformity and government power is not what I mean by choice and competition. Rep. Barney Frank is at least honest enough to say that the public option will bring us a government monopoly.



Advocates of government control want you to believe that the serious shortcomings of our medical and insurance system are failures of the free market. But that's impossible because our market is not free. Each state operates a cozy medical and insurance cartel that restricts competition through licensing and keeps prices higher than they would be in a genuine free market. But the planners won't talk about that. After all, if government is the problem in the first place, how can they justify a government takeover?



Many people are priced out of the medical and insurance markets for one reason: the politicians' refusal to give up power. Allowing them to seize another 16 percent of the economy won't solve our problems.



Freedom will.

The Beginning of the End of Healthcare Reform

Not So Fast: Reid Signals Delay in Health Reform

By Karen Tumulty / Washington Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009

Senate majority leader Harry Reid at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Nov. 3, 2009


Still struggling to line up the 60 votes that are needed to overcome a potential filibuster of health care reform, Senate majority leader Harry Reid sent a strong signal on Tuesday that President Obama is unlikely to be signing his top domestic priority into law this year, as Democrats had hoped. "We're not going to be bound by timelines," Reid told reporters as he emerged from a weekly lunch with Democratic Senators. He vowed to pass a bill "as expeditiously as we can," which is another way of saying it will probably be slow going over the weeks to come.


Reid: Reconciliation Not Needed for Health CareReid's comments were such a departure from the official line that, as soon as reports of them began appearing, his office issued a statement attempting to take the edge off of them. "Our goals remain unchanged. We want to get health insurance reform done this year, and we have unprecedented momentum to achieve that," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "There is no reason why we can't have a transparent and thorough debate in the Senate and still send a bill to the President by Christmas."



No reason, that is, except for the fact that it is already November.



All year, Democratic strategists on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have made no secret of the fact that they do not view time as their friend on enacting health reform, a goal that has eluded every President since Harry Truman who has attempted it. At one point, Democrats hoped to have the bill passed by both houses over the summer and on Obama's desk in the fall. Instead, the August recess was dominated by cable-television images of near riots at congressional town-hall meetings, and it took a dramatic, game-changing presidential address to a joint session of Congress to get health reform back on track.



But with the turning of a page in the calendar comes a new challenge — Congress will be entering an election year, not normally a time when it likes to take big political risks. Nor are lawmakers generally prone to be quick off the starting blocks when they return to Washington from the holiday recess, which means that the health care debate could drag on through the winter.



Reid's decision to include a public option in the bill that he takes to the floor has also complicated matters. While applauded by the party's liberal base, the idea of adding a government-run alternative plan to the choices for covering the uninsured faces resistance from some of the Senate's more conservative Democrats as well as Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican who has shown any serious interest in supporting the bill. And to get anything over the hurdle of a threatened GOP filibuster, Reid will need to hold together his entire caucus of 60 Democrats. At this point, said a senior Democratic aide, the majority leader is only "cautiously optimistic" that he has the votes to simply bring the bill to the floor — under a normally non-controversial "motion to proceed" — and is still at least several votes short of 60 on the more serious subsequent procedural vote, known as cloture, that would be needed to cut off debate.



There are also more practical hurdles, including the fact that Reid has not yet received an official analysis of his legislation from the Congressional Budget Office, and may not until late next week. Senators will not want to begin debating the legislation until they have the CBO's projection of how much it will cost and how it will affect the deficit. Between next week's Veteran's Day recess and the subsequent Thanksgiving break, that means it may well be December before the bill even gets to the Senate floor.



If that is so, the best-case scenario becomes this: both the House and the Senate pass their versions of the health care bill before leaving at the end of the year, and a conference committee begins its work while they are gone; a conference committee report, while controversial, would likely pass a Democratic Congress. If not, a loss of momentum could dampen the sense of inevitability that, as much as anything else, has brought health care reform to the point of being nearly within reach.

Get Involved!

Nothing gets politicians more worried than Voters, and Voters who write letters worry them more than Voters who do not.

Do your part and email or mail your Senator your thoughts on WHY they should oppose Health Care Reform. 

If you don't know how to contact your senator, here is a website that will guide you how to do it:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm


Being from Virginia, I wrote both my Senators and emailed them my thoughts.  It is best to keep things polite, short and professional.  Below is the text of my letter to Senator Webb.  Feel free to cut and paste and make it your own for your own Senator.



Tuesday, November 03, 2009




The Honorable James Webb

144 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510-4604



Dear Senator Webb,



I writing to urge you to oppose efforts currently moving through the House of Representatives and the Senate to Nationalize our Healthcare system under the fig leaf of “so-called” reform. Our country since its founding has been based on the concept of the free-market system, and this system has allowed our nation to have the most advanced and prosperous country on the earth.



The Health Care bills that have been proposed are so monstrously ill-conceived that I and a majority of voters in Virginia believe they will essentially set our country on a path towards socialized medicine. The bills are so flawed as to have no merit for passage, and must be opposed entirely. Whether there is a public option or a trigger, the long-term effect will be the same, and that will be the destruction of the free-market in Health Care and the inevitable decline in quality and innovation that that destruction will bring forth.



The increased governmental regulation on every aspect of our lives is an affront to liberty. The regulations that this will impose on private individuals and small business will cripple and stifle our economy. The enormous costs involved in this proposed system, over a trillion dollars, and most likely to really be many times more that cost, will saddle future generations with unsustainable debt and enslave our children and grandchildren for generations.



The enormous power shift away from individuals and states to the federal government that these bills represent, make a mockery of the founding principles of our Republic. Being a Senator from the great Commonwealth of Virginia, and the home of James Madison, you should be particularly offended by this power grab that is an offense to the founders memory.



I urge you strongly to oppose Health Care reform in whatever form it emerges from conference. Very few votes you will make as a Senator will be more important, and there are legions of Virginians that will remember if you voted for the enlargement of the Federal Government over the wishes of your state, and will hold you accountable at the next election.

The Costs of Medical Care

November 3, 2009


The "Costs" of Medical Care

By Thomas Sowell



We are incessantly being told that the cost of medical care is "too high"-- either absolutely or as a growing percentage of our incomes. But nothing that is being proposed by the government is likely to lower those costs, and much that is being proposed is almost certain to increase the costs.



There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor's office and more in taxes-- or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you.


Costs are not reduced simply because you don't pay them. It would undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age were in generations past.



Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive-- but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch.



Providing free lunches to people who go to hospital emergency rooms is one of the reasons for the current high costs of medical care for others. Politicians mandating what insurance companies must cover is another free lunch that leads to higher premiums for medical insurance-- and fewer people who can afford it.



Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of goods and services are the costs of producing them.



If highly paid chief executives of insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies agreed to work free of charge, it would make very little difference in the cost of insurance or medications. If doctors' incomes were cut in half, that would not lower the cost of producing doctors through years of expensive training in medical schools and hospitals, nor the overhead costs of running doctors' offices.



What it would do is reduce the number of very able people who are willing to take on the high costs of a medical education when the return on that investment is greatly reduced and the aggravations of dealing with government bureaucrats are added to the burdens of the work.



Britain has had a government-run medical system for more than half a century and it has to import doctors, including some from Third World countries where the medical training may not be the best. In short, reducing doctors' income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is refusing to pay those costs. Like other ways of refusing to pay costs, it has consequences.



Any one of us can reduce medical costs by refusing to pay them. In our own lives, we recognize the consequences. But when someone with a gift for rhetoric tells us that the government can reduce the costs without consequences, we are ready to believe in such political miracles.



There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not the least bit interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting the costs around or just refusing to pay them.



The high costs of "defensive medicine"-- expensive tests, medications and procedures required to protect doctors and hospitals from ruinous lawsuits, rather than to help the patients-- could be reduced by not letting lawyers get away with filing frivolous lawsuits.



If a court of law determines that the claims made in such lawsuits are bogus, then those who filed those claims could be forced to reimburse those who have been sued for all their expenses, including their attorneys' fees and the lost time of people who have other things to do. But politicians who get huge campaign contributions from lawyers are not about to pass laws to do this.



Why should they, when it is so much easier just to start a political stampede with fiery rhetoric and glittering promises?

Guess what's in the Healthcare Bill

Pelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers
by Capitol Confidential


The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):



Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.



So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today!



While there is debate over the details, it is clear that medical malpractive lawsuits have some impact on driving health care costs higher. There are likely a number of procedures that are done simply as a defense against future possible litigation. Recall this from the Washington Post:



“Lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, congressional budget analysts said today — a substantial sum that could help cover the cost of President Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s health system. New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but would also spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).”



Stay tuned. There are certainly many more terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad provisions in this massive bill.

In their own words - The Truth about the Public Option

I know that the Obama administration misuse of language is now so rampant that words have no meaning anymore, but the "Public Option" is competition myth must be exposed as the big lie that it is.

The best way to expose the lies, is to listen to the actual words their biggest supporters have said about the Public Option over the years, starting with none other than President Obama himself.

Public Option

Obamacare as visual metaphor

Imagine that Health Insurance is like meat.  Everyone likes meat, who doesn't.  For this metaphor lets say health insurance is like cows.

Like health insurance has been definied now, food is in this metaphor considered  a "right" and therefore MUST be provided by the government.

Now, cows are expensive, and are subjected to the laws of supply and demand like everything else is (as is healthcare).  Would doing the following raise or lower the cost (and /or) quality of meat?

Step 1.  Require EVERYONE to eat meat, regardless of their desires. 

Now some people like vegetables and some people eat only fish or chicken, but NOW we are going to require everyone to eat cows.

But we as Americans cannot allow people to make these choices.  People are going to be REQUIRED to eat meat.

Now, question 1 is this.  Will the requiring of EVERYONE to eat meat INCREASE or DECREASE the demand on meat?

If you said decrease, well..... math obviously wasn't your strong suit.  So, we now have a big increase in the demand for meat and we move on to step 2.


Step 2.  We are not only going to require EVERYONE to not only eat meat but to eat FILET MIGNON. 

Some people like hamburger (which  would be the equivalent of catastrophic health insurance coverage)

Relatively cheap and does the job.  Although not as tasty as higher cost plans, eating hamburger will essentially get cow meat into your body for the least amount of money.

And some people want more exotic coverage (mental health services, holistic medicine, plastic surgery etc).  This would be like Filet Mignon in the insurance example.

Now if we view the Massachusetts model as a guide (and it makes sense to since it is the model that most resembles the Bacus bill now in the Senate) mandates from the state legislature have required that all citizens that were buying hamburger now must start buying filet mignon. 

There is no reason to not strongly suspect that Congress, in their infinite mischief in the future and their uncontrollable urge to "help" people,  will pile more and more mandates for covering more and more health conditions.  It is probable that low-cost, high deductible, catastrophic coverage that is common now for peope to buy will essentially be mandated out of existence.

So, we now have a double whammy.  Everyone has to buy MEAT and everyone has to make sure that meat is FILET MIGNON.

Again, is this increasing or decreasing the demand on meat?

Now let's move on to Step 3.

Let's tell ranchers, those who invest in growing the cows to provide the meat, that they are not going to be highly regulated and that we are going to reduce their potential to make profits.

 

Will that increase the number of ranchers? or decrease them?

With a decreased profit motive, would ranchers invest in genetic research or other expensive techniques to increase their herd size (this would be like the pharmaceutical and drug devices business), or would they find that the billions of investment would not be best spent elsewhere, say chickens perhaps?

Will decreasing research and development in herd size increase and reducing the number of ranchers INCREASE or DECREASE the supply of cows?

or

So, now we have an increased demand on cows, and we have also severely restricted what part of the cow people are allowed to buy and we have (through regulation, increased taxes) decreased  the supply of cows.  What happens to the price?

Ah, but you say, HERE is where we need the public option.  The Public Option will keep this from happening.


So, the competition immune Government will come in to save the day and will crush those evil ranchers who are refusing to provide cows for low prices to honest Americans who want meat.

Now there are no ranchers left, and only the government is left to provide all Americans their Filet Mignon.  Yummy, I can't wait.

Now, the basic rules of Supply and Demand have not changed.  The demand for Cows is still blisteringly high and the supply of cows is permamently diminished, so....... Now that the government is involved what are our options?

Well, we could just keep borrowing the money to provide Filet Mignon to everyone and hope this works itself out in the future.  One major Downside to this theory is we could end up like Zimbabwe thus making hamburgers cost approximately 3 billion dollars each through rampant inflation and currency devaluation.

Or, we could start rationing care, which would lead to that situation that the left keeps saying is a myth.  The much maligned "Death Panel" which means the government will decide who gets to eat meat and YOU as an individual will have no say in it what-so-ever.

Wouldn't the BEST SOLUTION just be that we allow the Supply and Demand for meat work itself out and avoid all of this nonsense in the first place.  If the demand for cows gets big, and ranchers think there is money to be made, they will raise more cows and thus decrease the cost of meat but also make sure it is of high quality and widely available. 

If people want to eat hamburger, let them, or chicken, fish, corn etc. 

It works for cows NOW so there is no reason for it not to work on Health Insurance (and medical devices, drugs, etc.)

Regardless of the fairness of the issue, nothing is exempt from the laws of supply and demand, and there is no spinning the facts any way to show that anything has not ultimately been subjected to these pressures. 

I think I will now go have some chicken, and maybe a salad now.   I might even have a side of Tuna.

Obamanomics Explained

Below is a visual metaphor which explains Obamanomics and the theories behind it.

First, we have a financial crisis that led to a credit contraction that led to a very severe recession.  Our economy is essentially like a house on fire.  This is how Obamanomics addresses that fire.

Help!  Our economy tanked and the house is on fire!

Don't worry, let's pass a stimulus bill to fix this problem.  What we need right now is more spending and what better project to spend our $787 Billion dollars on?  Christmas Decorations!  Everyone loves Christmas.

But Wait!  We don't need any of that crap now.  We need stuff that will grow the economy and help put out this fire, not this stuff.   The House is Still on fire, and now getting worse!

Don't worry, we got this.  What we need right now is Cap and Trade.  Green Jobs, that is the answer.  And by the way, we will save the Earth.  Green Jobs will be like the new gasoline to power the American Economy.

Wait a minute, won't that make things worse?  How does pouring gasoline on this fire help.

Don't worry, we Know what we are doing.

ARGH!  Now things are even worse!  You don't know what you are doing!  HELP!

Don't worry, we have just the thing.  HEALTHCARE REFORM!  That will fix things.  You don't hate old people do you?  Don't you want people to have healthcare. 

Wait, don't you think you should do something about this fire first?

Don't worry, we know what we are doing.  Healthcare is like a roof that protects all Americans from bad weather.

Please stop!  DO SOMETHING ELSE!  The house is REALLY BURNING NOW!

Hmm, this is a puzzlement.  OK, Now we know what to do.  We need to pass card check so ALL Americans can join Unions.  That will fix this up really quick.  Union membership is like firewood, and when used properly can warm all Americans in prosperity.

FIREWOOD!  Are you NUTS!  We have a FIRE NOW!

And we really need to raise Taxes.  Raising Taxes is kind of like getting rid of all of these excess RACIST Firemen that are just standing around doing nothing.  These firemen are just like all of those greedy businesses and rich people that caused this problem in the first place.  We need to teach them a lesson.

And we need more regulation.  Just look at these Firehoses, how dangerous they are.  Why, if they were used on full strength they could really hurt someone.  We need to adjust these down so they are safer.  They are dispensing WAY too much water.

But WAIT!  We need MORE FIREMEN AND WATER NOT LESS!!

Don't worry, we know what we are doing.

There, things are all fixed up now.  Thank GOD we saved America and the Economy.

Ok, next project.  Let's build a new house, this time made of something less flammable, say ICE!  Yeah, Ice is water and definitely won't burn.  That will make the Economy impervious to downturns, and just think how much cooler it will be to be in a new ice house in August!

You guys really don't know what you are doing, do you?

Liberal Myth #5 - Debunked

Part of the argument for health care "reform" is that those big old evil insurance companies keep denying honest hardworking American's medical claims.

Once again, the ugly ugly truth is far different than what you are being led to believe.  Below is a chart showing the claim denial rate by insurer.  Guess who is the worst?

Medicare!

Health Care is a right?

So, if you accept that Healthcare is a Human Right...

















Then wouldn't it be logical that liquids are a human right?  You can live without Health Care, but you can't live without liquids.

And of course food.  I mean, you can't live without food right?

And shelter?  Isn't shelter more important than Healthcare?

Kinda makes you wonder where this might end.