The fringe press has been boosting and supporting Obama so much that they cannot see what is happening in this country. They continually report polls inaccurately so that they give the impression that the majority of the American people want socialized healthcare. When you look at the polls in question, it is obvious that the poll was more of a “push poll” than a real poll. A real poll asks real questions to get real answers. A push poll asks leading questions to get pre-determined answers. Real polls are valid. Push polls are not worth the cost of a match to burn them up.

That the Obamacare socialized medicine plan is in trouble is obvious. They are trying trick after trick to get the people to support their socialized medicine. None of their tricks have had any lasting effect. The public is too locked in on the issue and too informed. The latest trick is to rename the original government option, then public option and now consumer option or competition option. The hard core leftists are grasping at straws if they think that changing the name of a stupid idea will make it a good idea.

If Democrats were serious about reforming healthcare, they could do it in a couple of days. That is allowing for the slow legislative process. It would take me about 15 minutes to write it up and then they could have their debates and pass it.

My plan is very simple. It is to remove government from health care as much as is possible. Removing it entirely is not a good idea as it is a good idea to have doctors and other healthcare workers that are certified. Having an agency check on minimum standards of cleanliness and such is also a good idea. But other than that, government should get out of the way. Government should be out of the health insurance business except to license those that sell the insurance. People should be able to select plans from any state and tailor a plan that suits them. For example, right now my wife and I are paying for maternity care. We are both past age 60. The odds on our ever needing maternity care are zero. Therefore, if we could choose a plan without maternity care it would be cheaper. I could go down the list, but I think you get my point. Tailoring a plan to suit every individual would reduce costs, even with the current government involvement.

Once the costs were reduced and true market forces were at work in the health industry, you would see costs go down and the quality would go up. A perfect example of what I am talking about is Lasik eye surgery. When it was first introduced it cost about $1000 per eye and the surgery was very risky. Now it costs about $300 per eye and the risk is very low. The quality of the surgery has increased by a tremendous amount and the cost has gone down at the same time. How has that happened? The answer is very simple, competition drove those costs down. As doctors got into the business, they realized that if they lowered their costs, they would get more patients. As they got more patients their income went up. But, to get those patients they had to have the latest technology available.

Under Obamacare, none of that will happen. Quality will be something that people will hear about and wonder what it was. The costs will continually go up as nobody has any interest in controlling them. As the costs go up, rationing will occur because the government will only have so much money. The patients with the highest need will not get the services because they would cost the most money. Those that had the lowest cost services would get first choice of services. If there was anything left, those with high cost services would be taken care of. The rationing would be the “Death Panels” that Sarah Palin talked about and the left said would not happen.

We have to stop this monstrosity called Obamacare. There is still a chance to defeat it. I heard an expert this morning say that it had a 50-50 chance of passing. That is much too high for me. Until that number is zero, I will not be happy. Also on Glenn Beck, he said that as the age goes up, the support for socialized medicine goes down. If politicians remember, older voters vote in a higher percentage than younger ones. Voting for this unconstitutional bill would mean a massive turnover in Congress. There probably will be a massive turnover even if it does not pass, just because of all the other terrible things that Obama is making Congress pass. But, passing this one would mean certain political death for a huge number of people who voted for the bill. Since it had not been implemented, it might still be dismantled before implementation. At least that is what I hope for.

Barack Obama is trying to force his health care plan down the throats of Americans with as little discussion about it as possible. He wants no information about the plan to get out. He is going around the country telling everyone that they will not notice any changes to their current health care plan if his plan is adopted. If that is the case, why do we even need his health care plan? He will say to cover everyone, but the plan being discussed in the Senate covers the same amount of people as the current system. In other words, there are 37 million uninsured under Obama’s plan and supposedly 46 million currently uninsured. That is hardly enough of a difference to make any radical changes in coverage.

The plan being discussed in the Senate has a big hidden problem. That problem is the “public option”. That is a government sponsored health insurance plan. If that is adopted, all employers will quickly drop their current health insurance coverage and adopt the “public option”. That would eventually put everyone under the “public option” and give America the single-payer system that Democrats covet. They covet the single-payer system because it gives the government a great deal of control over the citizens of the country.

The Democrats love to talk about the wonderful health plans of England, Canada and Australia. All of them have single-payer systems that are similar. All of them are now starting to allow private health care options because the single-payer systems they have cannot meet the demand. We do not need to follow after the plans that are failing. We should continue the plan that the single-payer systems are starting to emulate.

I spent two years in England between 1970 and 1972. England adopted the single-payer system shortly after World War II. At that time, England and America had health care that was roughly equivalent. By the time I was there in the early 1970’s, England had not progressed very much beyond the health care of the early 1960’s. I had a couple of opportunities to visit English doctors while I was there and was appalled at the shabby conditions that existed. The rooms the doctors used were larger than American doctors, but they were not stocked with enough medical equipment to supply the doctor. When I was there, the doctors were still all English. Now, the doctors are almost exclusively foreign born. That also goes for Canada and Australia.

The medical care is being rationed in England, Canada and Australia. Over Thanksgiving 2008, I visited Spokane, WA. While there, I read the local paper. It was reporting that Canadians were having babies in Washington because the hospitals in Canada had met their quota for the year and would not admit the women. I also have read about patients that have had to come to the United States from Canada to get medical care when needed. They were put on lists and would have died before they could have seen a doctor. In Australia hospitals limit specialists to a small number of surgeries per quarter. It does not matter how many patients need surgery, only that number of surgeries can be performed. That is the kind of thing we can look forward to under a single-payer system.

We have the best medical system in the world. There are problems that exist with our current system. Almost all of them are either directly or indirectly caused by government interference. The best way to reform the current system is to get government out of making requirements for medical insurance. That is just a scam to help their buddies in the health care delivery system. If everyone was allowed to choose their options, insurance would be cheaper. If we could take our policies from state to state, insurance would be cheaper. We could learn a lot from the car insurance system. If we modeled the health insurance system after the car insurance system, insurance would be cheaper and more people would be covered. There are other options that may be better. The one thing we cannot do is allow the government to compete with insurance companies or get into offering health insurance at all. That is a recipe for disaster.

We do need to make some reforms in our health care system. What we do not need to do is throw the baby out with the bath water. Tweaking the current system will deliver more good than any new system could possibly deliver. Changing our system to something else is not about delivering health care. It is about control over you, the citizen of this country. A “public option” is really a recipe for the government to step into your life and tell you how to live.

I prefer to live my life the way I choose. I am an American and was born to freedom. I was not born to be a slave. I will not be a slave to anyone. If you want to be a slave, support the “public option” and kiss your freedom good-bye. If you value your freedom at all, call your congressman and both Senators and tell them you want no part of the “public option”. Then, make sure they follow your lead. If they do not, work to defeat them in the next election. That is the only thing politicians understand. Make sure they know you are serious and they will listen to you.

Barack Obama has been traveling around the country selling his healthcare initiative. In his talks, he has emphasized that those of us with health insurance will not notice any difference. We will still have our health insurance. His plan will only add a government option, now called a public option, to allow those uninsured to get health insurance. That is true, if you only consider the time period from the time the law is put into place until about six months out, maybe less. After that time, the companies that have health insurance will dump their health insurance plans for the less expensive “public option”. At that point, everyone will notice that things are different and it will be too late to do anything about it. That is exactly the scenario that Barack Obama is trying to set up.

Why is our President going around the country and not telling the American people the truth? Is he afraid that the American people cannot handle the truth? Is he afraid of what the American people would do if they knew what the truth really is? Those are the profound questions that are hounding the President as he goes from talk to talk not telling the whole truth.

First of all, he is not telling us the truth because he knows that if we really knew what was going to happen, we would not approve. That would mean that his takeover of the health system in America would be dead in the water before it ever took sail. We would be on the phone to our Congress men and women and demanding that they scuttle this travesty before it sees the light of day. The only people that would support it would be the communists and the other Marxist types that haunt this country.

The second question is tied up in the first one. Yes, he is afraid of the public finding out the truth. The truth is the worst thing that can happen to Barack Obama and his socialist healthcare program. He has to lie to the American people to get them to see that there is a problem. And he has to lie to the American people to get them to agree to a solution to the problem that they could not see. First of all, his facts are all wrong. There might be 46 million people without health insurance at any given point in time. That does not mean that there are 46 million people that cannot afford health insurance like Barack Obama and his minions like to tell us. A lot of that 46 million, about 13 million, are the illegal aliens that should not be here in the first place. So, the facts of the matter are not even agreed upon by any expert at any level.

Yes, Barack Obama is afraid of what the American people will do when the American people find out. If they find out before he imposes the socialist health care program on America, he and the Democrats are toast. If they find out before the 2010 elections, the Democrats will take a licking. If the awakening is put off long enough, they will be dependent on the government health care and then the Democrats know how to play them like a fiddle. The secret of this question is when the American people find out. If they find out early, the Democrats are in big trouble. If they find out late, the Democrats are in the driver’s seat.

The problem is now, that a lot of us know that he is not telling the truth on this issue. Since he is not willing to trust the American people with the truth about a vital part of their lives, what other lies is he hiding from the public? The question then becomes, how trustworthy is Barack Obama and the Democrats? This is an issue that the truth would help. Since it is important to every American, the truth would help every American make an informed decision. Democrats seem to believe that lies are better than the truth. When people find out the truth, just answer with more lies and wait for another day. That is part of why we are in the mess we are in. Republicans are not blameless in the not telling the truth game, but they tell the truth far more than Democrats. In this issue, Republicans are trying to get the truth out. Democrats are trying to get the bill passed with no debate and no information getting to the public. That is not how to run a Republic.

We should have politicians that tell us the truth. A politician that tells the truth all the time is a rare thing indeed. Politicians seem to think that the way to get ahead is to tell lie after lie. When caught in a lie, just answer with a lie. That is not the way to get the trust of the American people and keep it. Barack Obama has embarked on the wrong trail if he thinks that not telling the truth to the American people will get him respect as a President. Presidents that tell the American people the way things are will get more respect than a President that lies to the public. Look at the list of Presidents and the best ones are the ones that have a reputation of telling the truth. Obama is on the wrong road. He shows no sign of leaving that road any time soon.