Where Does The Truth Lie?

I watched the much-anticipated speech by Obama to a joint session of Congress tonight and was underwhelmed. It sounded like the same song-and-dance we heard during the campaign with little specifics. He is going to make insurance companies cover preexisting conditions, he is going to keep them from canceling your insurance if you get sick, he is going to provide competition with a public option that will drive down health care costs, blah, blah, blah........

Obviously he decided the "American taxpayers are a bunch of morons so they will buy anything I tell them" approach worked with the election so why not with health care reform? For about an hour he kept shoveling it and his lackeys in Congress just kept lapping it up. His crusade against the evil insurance companies (he is laying off doctors for now) would have us believe that some incarnation of Hitler is running them with the purpose of taking your money and then dropping you in the dirt if you try to use the insurance.

Then when it was all over the Republicans trot out this doctor/congressman from Louisiana for their response. This guy had the delivery of a wounded seagull scrapping for trash off a barge. It was not pretty!

Here are a few things our president didn't bring up that might address the problem with health care costs:

1. Tort reform. One of the driving forces behind the soaring medical costs is defensive medicine being practiced because of the threat of litigation. Doctors order more tests than really necessary because they know some snake-assed lawyer is waiting to ruin his life if he doesn't. Are there bad doctors treating patients everyday? Absolutely! Are these multi-million dollar jury awards justified? In most cases no. Outrageous civil awards lead to higher insurance premiums and discourage a doctor from practicing practical medicine. If a doctor doesn't prescribe a medication for cholesterol and you have a heart attack are you going to sue him? But then there is a defect in the medication and he and the drug company get sued for that! It is like running a gauntlet.

2. The Medicare and Medicaid systems. Probably the biggest area of waste and fraud in the health care arena can be attributed to the ineffectiveness of these government programs. Billions of dollars are shifted around as political payback to this interest group or that with legislation crafted in the dark to screw the less favored group. So much effort is put into navigating the channels of these bloated institutions that such incidentals as patient care are addressed after the required documentation is perfected.

3. Slimy politicians. How can we trust these idiots with anything this important based on their recent performance? The Democrats are such sycophants and the Republicans are the most spineless I have ever seen. They let staffers write the legislation (with the help of lobbyists) and then are too lazy to read it. Their performance at the town halls this summer demonstrated how inept they are. As the "Cash for Clunkers" program illustrated these people are out of touch and cannot manage anything.

So buckle up because it is probably going to get ugly. All he managed to do was to make his opponents dig in deeper. I can't imagine that he changed any minds. Certainly not mine!