Pompous and Arrogant Liar (Additional Material)

Maybe if I repeat the same lies with seeming conviction, they'll believe me.

I listened then watched the President address a joint session of Congress. I was horrified at his speech because he keeps re-iterating the same lies and distortions. To set the record straight, here are a few of the whoppers.


Health care will not increase the deficit.

The CBO has already weighed in on this. Without increasing taxes, which he did not offer tonight, there is no way to increase coverage without increasing costs.

"...nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."

By building incentives to get employers to drop coverage (the proposed fine is less than companies pay now) Obama is initiating a change that will result in employees losing their current coverage. How is that different to the employee who will lose his company's coverage.


"There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally."

Nothing will prevent illegals from obtaining coverage, so some will; guaranteed.


"My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition."

Obama has been seen on video supporting single payer.


"...in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down."

This is because insurance companies can not sell across state lines. If Obama wanted to seriously address this problem, the Congres could, constitutionally, under the interstate commerce clause, allow interstate competition. Further, the federal government will not be a competitor in the traditional sense, they will never act like a traditional business because their objectives are not the same. The Post Office has a goal of universal delivery that conflicts with their acting like a business, for example. You can debate the goodness of that, but mission constraints always prevent government from being fully businesslike. (I actually agree that this state imposed lack of competition hurts America.)


By the way, he successfully finessed his position on the public option, seeming to strongly support it, while saying it should be negotiable. Pretty clever ploy, but I think if the Republicans just hang tough on that issue, they can kill the whole thing. Then they can blame the Dems for refusing to negotiate on the point and point to this speech to show that it was negotiable.

(Additional Material)

I thought of some more after having another beer.

"That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.
The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care."

If there is waste and fraud, eliminate it. Why does it have to wait for passage of this bill? Answer: you can't easily eliminate waste and fraud in government programs. Seniors know this, they don't mind the fraud because the system is geared to get payments to their doctors fairly easily; but it makes the system susceptible to fraud. To go after fraud, the administration must pay for enforcement or slow payments pending reviews. Neither is going to be popular. Further, if medicare money is going to be saved, and medicare will be unchanged, how is that related to this health care bill? Clearly the President isn't telling the whole story.


"I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress."

Then why have your aids used pejoratives to dismiss the legitimate protests of ordinary people at town halls? Why have you dismissed debate, with words like "the time for bickering is over?" Why do you treat those who disagree with disdain?