August 9, 2009
Health Plan Gasping
President Barack Obama’s proposed health care plan is gasping for air as Congress adjourns for its’ usual August recess.
During this interim, our Representatives are being bombarded with skeptical questions by their constituents. What has happened to the old, liberal, bait? “For free, take.”
When the proposal was introduced in Congress last June, Americans were evenly divided about the plan.
Now, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that 47 percent of respondents with private insurance now say the plan is a bad idea.
This is a 10 percent, negative, jump since the Obama plan was introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the House, and Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Senate.
OBAMA’S HEALTH PLAN
The full House won’t vote on the proposal, at the earliest, until September. It is certain that the Obama health care plan then will be greatly revised.
Obama insists on rules requiring insurers to:
- Cover people with pre-existing conditions,
- Limit out-of-pocket expenses,
- Bar insurers from dropping people who become seriously ill,
- Ban annual or lifetime coverage caps,
- Allow adults to stay in their parents’ plans through age 26.
The President says, “If you’ve got health insurance, then the reform we’re proposing will also help you because it will provide more stability and security.”
TAXING THE RICH
The poll found only one idea with majority House support – a surtax on the “rich.” The Senate has not yet announced a source of funding. However, all of us know it will be “middle class” wage earners.
Low earners have the most votes in a general election. Consequently they pay little in taxes, if anything. Generally they get.
High earners open Swiss bank accounts with little, if any, U.S. taxes.
PUBLIC SUPPORT DROPPING
The Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that public support for levying fines on businesses that don’t offer insurance, dropped from last month.
Half of those polled now are in favor. Only four in 10 liked the idea of taxing insurance companies that offer particularly generous health plans.
The proportion of people who said it was “very,” or “fairly likely,” that Mr. Obama would bring “real change’ dropped to 51 percent -- from 61 percent in February.
The share of those who said he could be trusted to keep his word, fell to 48 percent this month – from 58 percent in April.
SIMILAR POLL
It is interesting to note that a New York Times and Columbia Broadcasting System News poll came up with similar results recently.
The general economic outlook of Americans is dreary.
WORRISOME VIEW
Your website Writer At Large – who has followed American politics as a Journalist Syndicate columnist since 1962 (with 30 or more newspapers) -- has a worrisome view of today’s global economy.
China and India – with huge, non-union work forces – are a serious threat to American workers who are handicapped by union contracts and government protections.
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is given much credit for unionized work forces in the worldwide Great Depression. His motto was (really): “Tax and tax. Spend and spend. Elect and elect.”
We also recall the words of philosopher George Santayana “Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
FDR’S SONG
World War II production ended the Great Depression while accumulating an ever-growing national debt. However, FDR’s spending was given much credit for “Happy Days Are Here Again”
Meanwhile, China and India – without unions or environmental restrictions – built industrial empires that today threaten the United States of America’s industrial workers.
For example: if China gets nervous and cashes in its U.S. Bonds, the American economy will collapse!
NATIONAL DEBT
Our National Debt at this writing is:
$11,776,630,941,977
Make that $12 trillion. However, it will be well over that astronomical sum before you can google it.
Don’t laugh! Russia, Germany and China went bankrupt after World War II. France and Great Britain came close.
World War III is surely on its way – the United Nations notwithstanding.
Which nations will go bankrupt this time?
By Lindsey Wilger Williams, retired newspaper publisher and syndicated columnist
