BEWARE THE PUBLIC OPTION TRAP

BEWARE THE PUBLIC OPTION TRAP
As any good Persian rug dealer knows, you have to hold back a bargaining chit so that you can whip it out at the very end to tie down the sale. That's how Obama is playing the so-called public option in his health care program. His plan seems to be to combine its abandonment with some form of tort reform and try to buy off some Republicans - maybe only Maine's Olympia Snowe - to give moderate Democrats enough confidence in the veneer of bi-partisanship to win their backing for his bill.

But it's a fraud and a trick.

Here's why:

(a) Whether or not there is a public option makes no difference in the fundamental objection most elderly have to the bill - that it guts Medicare and Medicaid. All of the bills now under consideration cut these two programs by one half of a trillion dollars. And all of them require the medical community to serve thirty to fifty million new patients without any concomitant growth in the number of doctors or nurses. These cuts and shortages will lead to draconian rationing of medical care for the elderly, whether under a public option or not.

(b) The most likely proposal is to replace the public option with some form of buyer's co-op. But since there is no currently existing co-op to serve as a vehicle for health insurance, it would have to be formed. By who? The government, of course. That would mean, as a practical matter, that the "co-op option" would be a government run plan for several years. In fact, they may not get around to setting up a co-op at all.

(c) The other alternative, mentioned by Senator Snowe herself, would be for a "trigger" mechanism. This provision would require the creation of a public alternative to private insurance plans if, after a specified period of time, they did not lower rates to a pre-determined level. Given the escalation of health care costs, it is almost inevitable that this provision would lead to a government plan. And, anyway, who says that the government insurance option would be more successful in reducing costs?

But Obama has to at least appear to be willing to compromise, so he has invented the idea of re-packaging the public option in order to seem to be flexible.

The key, here, is not to be distracted by the debate over the public option. It matters very much to private insurance companies whether the government becomes their competitor, but, for the elderly (and the near-elderly), the key concern is not the public option by the rationing and cuts projected under the program.

In the Clinton Administration, we worked hard to kill the proposed Medicare cuts and are no less committed to stopping them in the Obama presidency. That they were once proposed by the right and are now being pushed by the left makes no difference. A cut is a cut is a cut. And Medicare should not be cut.



By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on September 16, 2009



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URGENT ACTION NEEDED ON HEALTH CARE

URGENT ACTION NEEDED ON HEALTH CARE

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on July 17, 2009

In two weeks, Obama's health care plan is likely to become law, ending medicine as we know it in the United States! Unless we can stop him, our own personal access to medical care will be attenuated (no matter if we can pay for it ourselves) and we will all be subject to bureaucratic rationing.

Seeing his popularity draining away rapidly, President Obama has cynically decided to ram through the complex health care legislation in two weeks, without debate or amendment. He is going to give up the attempt to win sixty votes in the Senate and will use the budget reconciliation procedure - which is only used for budget bills - to push it through with fifty votes.

His plan would:

• Force employers either to offer health insurance to their employees or pay a tax of 8% of their payrolls. This would apply to all with payrolls of $250,000 a year or more (basically every business)

• Reduce medical fees to the Medicare Schedule Plus 5%, driving doctors out of the profession and increasing the need for rationing.

• Raise taxes on all making more than $250,000 a year ($350,000 for a couple) with a surcharge. Rates will go as high as 45%.

• Set up a government owned health care plan to compete with private plans. Getting a subsidy, it will soon put the private plans out of business and we will have a single payer Canadian style system.

In Catastrophe, we enumerate the disaster of the Canadian health care system. A cancer death rate 16% higher than in the US. A colon cancer rate 25% higher due to waits for colonoscopies and a death rate once afflicted that is 41% as opposed to 32% in the US. An eight week wait for cancer radiation therapy.

We are organizing a media campaign to target swing state Senators to delay or kill the Obama bill. We will concentrate on:

Montana - Baucus and Tester

North Dakota - Dorgan and Conrad

South Dakota - Johnson

Nebraska - Nelson

Arkansas - Pryor and Lincoln

Louisiana - Landrieu

North Carolina - Hagan

Indiana - Bayh

Connecticut - Lieberman

Maine - Snow and Collins

The text of the ad will be:

"How can Obama care for fifty million new people without more doctors? By cutting access to care for the elderly. End Medicare as we know it. The government decides who gets hip, knee, or heart surgery. Eight month wait for colonoscopies. In Canada, an eight week wait for cancer radiation. Say no to Obama's plan. Write Senator Evan Bayh today so you can still see your doctor tomorrow."

On Monday or Tuesday, we will e mail you info on how to donate to our campaign. We need to raise $4 million in one week to impact this vote. With those funds, we can saturate these states and send the moderate Democrats scurrying for cover. But we need your quick response.

The stakes have never been higher.

Thank you.

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Morris: STICK TO YOUR GUNS, REPUBLICANS

RESISTING O'S WORLD - STICK TO YOUR GUNS, REPUBLICANS

By DICK MORRIS / EILEEN MCGANN



Gen. Colin Powell is wrong to say that the Republican Party must move to the center: Now is not the time to try for triangulation.

This is a time for the party to stand firm on its principles until this nation again comes around to the GOP's way of thinking. This process will be driven by the consequences of President Obama's program.

The challenge brought by Obama is no longer just theoretical: He means to pass the ultimate leftist agenda and has the votes to do so.

As a result, our nation will be unrecognizable well before the 2010 elections. Business will march to a beat drummed in Washington. The top producers will be hounded by confiscatory taxation. A majority will pay nothing or receive government welfare. Our health-care system will be destroyed. Illegal immigrants will be well on their way to citizenship.

Obama's brave new world will be the subject of the 2010 elections. We believe that his Congress will be swept from power as a result.

We think that inflation will join a lingering recession -- giving us recess-flation -- and that high unemployment will continue. Voters will recognize the damage to their health care as bureaucrats weigh in to prevent them from getting the care they need. Our security and defense failures may well have cost us Pakistan, and the nightmare of a nuclear-armed terrorist state may have already come true (even before Iran).

All America will be watching the Obama fallout, and Republicans must be seen as a clear alternative -- a strong voice for reversal of the harm the president will have inflicted -- if they are to benefit from this catastrophe.

If the GOP is seen as a moderate force, a party just looking to split the difference, voters will cynically conclude that there is no distinction between the parties.

There is a season for triangulation and a season for confrontation. When America faces a new challenge -- such as what the financial crisis now poses -- we look to the left and right for new answers. We want the debate to rage. Those who seek to paper over are ignored. Such was the fate of the first President Bush in 1992 and of Sen. John McCain in 2008.

But once the debate has raged and the alternatives have been fleshed out, voters want a consensus, a Hegelian synthesis, on how to move in a new direction. They want to extract the best from each alternative and combine them. This is triangulation (a term coined by Dick).

To ignore the demand for synthesis and insist on continuing the debate is to suffer the fate of Sen. Bob Dole in 1996 and Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

This process -- polarization, debate, synthesis and action -- is how America has always moved ahead. We are not Japan; we use the debate to see the options. And we are not Italy or France; we come to conclusions and act upon them, eventually leaving the debate far behind.

Now another great debate has been born. The thesis is democratic socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism.

The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It's up to the Republicans to fight along these lines. Compromise is not an option, yet.

At some point, the synthesis will set in. But now is the time for clear alternatives and sharp disagreement. Only later can we hope to extract America from the leftist clutches into which it has fallen.

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OBAMA FEELS HEAT IN POLLS

OBAMA FEELS HEAT IN POLLS

By DICK MORRIS

Published on March 17, 2009

He may not be paying much attention to the stock market, where $11 trillion of pensions, investments and 401(k)s have been destroyed, but you can be sure that President Obama is paying attention to the polls showing diminishing support for his policies.

Of course, in presidential polling, all numbers are not equally important. Obama got 52 percent of the national vote. So when his approval drops, as it has, from 65 percent on Inauguration Day to 56 percent now (according to Rasmussen), he is playing with house money. Most of those who are coming to negative conclusions about his administration didn't vote for him in the first place.

But there are ominous signs in the data.

So far, Obama's administration has been characterized by two main programs: the stimulus spending and bank bailouts. But the polls indicate problems with each pillar of his package.

The public generally approves of his stimulus proposals. CNN found that voters approved of his economic program in general by 59-40, while Pew Research discovered that they backed his stimulus program specifically by 56-35.

But the problem is that voters don't think the stimulus package will work. CNN's poll, while showing broad approval of his programs, also found that voters did not believe his economic proposals would work, by 22-64. In fact, the CBS survey data indicates that 48 percent feel that the "economy would improve without government intervention," while only 41 percent agreed that intervention was "necessary."

If voters approve of the stimulus program, even while they are pessimistic about its impact and question its necessity, they are downright hostile to the bank bailouts. CBS found that they disapproved of the bailouts by 37-53 and noted that "48 percent are mostly resentful toward Obama's policies toward banks and financial institutions." While Pew found 48-40 approval of the bailouts, it also noted that 87 percent are "bothered by the bank bailout."

So Obama has one program that is popular but won't work and another that is downright unpopular.

And his presidency is dependent on how they work out.

Clinton could sustain his presidency with small-bore initiatives. But Obama can't. Stem cell research is well and good, but it's not the central concern of the nation at the moment.

Some news organizations like to compare how Obama is doing with how other presidents fared. Specifically, at this point in their presidencies, George W. Bush was at 58 percent approval while Clinton stood at 53 percent. By that measurement, Obama's 56 percent would seem in the normal range.

But Clinton won with only 42 percent of the vote in 1992, and Bush got 49 percent. Obama, of course, won 52 percent of the vote. So here's how the vote-to-popularity ratio stacks up:

• Clinton: Vote 42%; Job Approval 53%; Difference +11%

• W. Bush: Vote 49%; Job Approval 58%; Difference + 9%

• Obama: Vote 52%; Job Approval 56%; Difference + 4%

...not very good.

And let's remember that Clinton lost control of Congress in 1994 while Bush's presidency -- heading downward -- was saved by his excellent response to Sept. 11.

But presidential popularity is not going to be the key determinant of Obama's political success or failure. The unemployment rate is going to fill the role of political harbinger. And that front is unlikely to be favorable. Despite the current reports of a false dawn -- based on ratings that, while still dropping, have slowed somewhat in their descent -- we are in for a long, hard haul in trying to turn this economy around. And Obama's vigorous pronouncements that he plans to raise taxes in two years are not going to help induce the economy's most prodigious spenders -- the wealthy -- to step up to the checkout counter.

Obama's fate is deeply linked to the economy. These days, that's like being tied to an anchor.

Dick Morris: SOCIALISM, OBAMA-STYLE

SOCIALISM, OBAMA-STYLE



The perfect storm combining the vast expansion of government's role in the American economy, a looming Obama triumph and likely huge Democratic gains in Congress augur the most serious threat of the onset of socialism the United States has faced since the New Deal. But while it became obvious that FDR's goal was to save capitalism, not to replace it, it is by no means clear that Barack Obama is similarly inclined.

As alarm bells ring incessantly, demanding government action to prevent the conflagration of our most important companies and markets, the Federal Reserve and Treasury rush to extinguish the flames with hoses filled with money. But this massive and needed public-sector intrusion into private enterprise begs the key question: After the fires are put out, will the government firefighters leave, or will they move into the companies they saved and evict their former corporate owners?

The current crisis makes it clear that the government will be invited inside the management and ownership of our top financial and corporate institutions. But it is unclear whether it will ever withdraw after the crisis has passed.

Obama's stated goal of "spreading the wealth around" may indicate an inclination to embrace European-style socialist democracy. His emphasis on promoting "fairness" in income distribution and his willingness to sacrifice economic growth by raising taxes on "the rich" all seem to point in that direction. Will Obama realize that while government is needed to prevent a crash, it is hopelessly inadequate as an engine of prosperity? Bureaucrats are neither sufficiently competent nor honest nor independent enough to make key decisions about where capital should be invested, except when it is needed to extinguish the flames of crisis.

If Obama wins and takes a solidly and overwhelmingly Democratic Congress with him -- including a filibuster-proof Senate -- we will have to entrust our system of private ownership, limited government and free enterprise to the tender mercy of the left. But the newly empowered liberals will not have to breach the walls of the private sector, justifying each new intrusion by argument and logic. Rather, they will already be inside the gates, invited there to save these institutions from their own history of greed and mismanagement. Will the left simply leave government there, effectively converting our private enterprise system, where government absorbs about a third of our GDP into a social democracy, a la Europe, where the public sector accounts for almost half of the economy?

For those who would rather not find out, it is particularly important to redouble our efforts for John McCain and to battle for each Senate seat. McCain is only seven points behind -- not an insurmountable margin. A good final week could save the free enterprise system. We owe it to our future to try.

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By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN