Who said this?:
The problems of our economy have occurred not as an outgrowth of laissez-faire, unbridled competition. They have occurred under the guidance of federal agencies, and under the umbrella of federal regulations.
Answer: Sen. Ted Kennedy, in defending trucking deregulation in 1978.
Hat tip to Steven F. Hayward
http://blog.american.com/?p=4328
In a moment of lucidity, Teddy Kennedy actually had the capacity to verbalize a little rational thought.
Obama’s socialist policies may resonate with the lazy slugs whose six illegitimate children are sucking off the public teat, but the working class taxpayers are getting a rude awakening.
THE ONE bragged during the campaign that he would lower taxes for 95% of working class Americans. With all the spending and bailouts, there aren’t enough wealthy people in this country to pay for Obama’s splurge. The wealthy jerks who voted for this moron, (and yes there are some, especially in Hollywood) are beginning to realize that the upper 5% tax bracket really is saddled with paying the most taxes and attacking them is counterproductive. Approximately 40 percent of Americans do not pay federal income taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center. Which leaves the small percentage of wealthy, and the bulk of the working class population to foot the bill.
Look what happens when a government takes total control of healthcare decisions:
RUISLIP, England — When Bruce Hardy’s kidney cancer spread to his lung, his doctor recommended an expensive new pill from Pfizer. But Mr. Hardy is British, and the British health authorities refused to buy the medicine. His wife has been distraught.
“Everybody should be allowed to have as much life as they can,” Joy Hardy said in the couple’s modest home outside London.If the Hardys lived in the United States or just about any European country other than Britain, Mr. Hardy would most likely get the drug, although he might have to pay part of the cost. A clinical trial showed that the pill, called Sutent, delays cancer progression for six months at an estimated treatment cost of $54,000.
But at that price, Mr. Hardy’s life is not worth prolonging, according to a British government agency, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The institute, known as NICE, has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/health/03nice.html?_r=1
Keep in mind, the British government makes that kind of judgement on taxpayers with their own taxes, whether they like it or not.
As Martin Feldstein at the WSJ points out:
Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama’s health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama administration’s goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the next two decades. That reduction would be achieved by eliminating “high cost, low-value treatments,” by “implementing a set of performance measures that all providers would adopt,” and by “directly targeting individual providers . . . (and other) high-end outliers.”
……In the British national health service, a government agency approves only those expensive treatments that add at least one Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) per £30,000 (about $49,685) of additional health-care spending. If a treatment costs more per QALY, the health service will not pay for it. The existence of such a program in the United States would not only deny lifesaving care but would also cast a pall over medical researchers who would fear that government experts might reject their discoveries as “too expensive.”
One reason the Obama administration is prepared to use rationing to limit health care is to rein in the government’s exploding health-care budget. Government now pays for nearly half of all health care in the U.S., primarily through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The White House predicts that the aging of the population and the current trend in health-care spending per beneficiary would cause government outlays for Medicare and Medicaid to rise to 15% of GDP by 2040 from 6% now. Paying those bills without raising taxes would require cutting other existing social spending programs and shelving the administration’s plans for new government transfers and spending programs.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574358233780260914.html
By the way, the CBO states emphatically that government-run health care will raise, not cut, costs in the long run.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/08/congressional-budget-expert-says-preventive-care-will-raise-not-cut-costs.html
If you’re chronically ill or elderly, watch out for Obama’s proposed ‘Death Panels’: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2009/08/12/will-you-won-t-you-be-on-my-death-panel.aspx
Did you know that if you’re against the socialist ObamaCare, you’re a “holocaust denier”?
Yes. Really.
According to moonbat Arthur Caplan, Ph.D, msnbc.com contributor:
“Rush Limbaugh and those invoking the Nazi analogy to attack President Barack Obama’s effort to reform health care in America are not “insane” as David Brooks pronounced on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the rest of the loud-mouthed right wing are, when they even hint at an analogy to the Nazis in talking about Obama’s health reform effort, engaged in something far worse than insanity. They are engaged in the vile evil of Holocaust denial.”
In case you haven’t realized it yet, the whole aspect of ObamaCare is just the latest in his many socialist power grabs:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/welcome-to-the-kleptocracy/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/hank-paulson-threatened-bank-of-america-ceo-into-accepting-tarp/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/its-official-obama-wants-everything/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/how-the-government-rewards-common-sense/
Had Bush done even a fraction of what Obama has done in the name of “community organizing” and expansion/intrusion of government into your own personal decisions, the liberals would be wetting their pants.
Not even Obama can fully explain why taxpayer-funded government-run socialist ObamaCare is such a great idea.
More problems with ObamaCare:
The Un-Constitutionality:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082103033.html
The scam-type qualities: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/insurance_scam_3wP79wDEynxzrETWvqPpFL
Lessons from the French:
http://www.examiner.com/x-6665-Liberal-Examiner~y2009m8d8-Health-Care-Reform-Series-The-French-health-care-system
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/rodwin/french.html
The House just passed Pelosi’s tyrannical legislation. The battle goes to the Senate next.
If they have any decency or respect for the Constitution, they will trash it on arrival.