"Hubris-laden charlatans" was the way a recent e-mail from a
reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems
especially appropriate for the Charlatan-in-Chief, Barack Obama,
whose speech to a joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece
of rhetoric and a shameless fraud.
To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions
more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is
world-class chutzpa and an insult to anyone's intelligence. To do so
after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already
showed this to be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy
behind the glittering words.
Did we really need CBO experts to tell us that there is no free
lunch? Some people probably did and the true believers in the Obama
cult may still believe the President, instead of believing either
common sense or budget experts.
Even those who can believe that Obama can conjure up the money
through eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" should ask themselves
where he is going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses, and
hospitals needed to take care of millions more patients.
If he can't pull off that miracle, then government-run medical
care in the United States can be expected to produce what
government-run medical care in Canada, Britain, and other countries
has produced-- delays of weeks or months to get many treatments, not
to mention arbitrary rationing decisions by bureaucrats.
Obama can deny it in words but what matters are deeds-- and no
one's words have been more repeatedly the direct opposite of his
deeds-- whether talking about how his election campaign would be
financed, how he would not rush legislation through Congress, or how
his administration was not going to go after CIA agents for their
past efforts to extract information from captured terrorists.
President Obama has also declared emphatically that he will not
interfere in the internal affairs of other nations-- while telling
the Israelis where they can and cannot build settlements and telling
the Hondurans whom they should and should not choose to be their
president.
One of the secrets of being a glib talker is not getting hung up
over whether what you are saying is true, and instead giving your
full attention to what is required by the audience and the
circumstances of the moment, without letting facts get in your way
and cramp your style. Obama has mastered that art.
Con men understand that their job is not to use facts to convince
skeptics but to use words to help the gullible to believe what they
want to believe. No message has been more welcomed by the gullible,
in countries around the world, than the promise of something for
nothing. That is the core of Barack Obama's medical care plan.
President Obama tells us that he will impose various mandates on
insurance companies but will not interfere with our free choice
between being insured by these companies or by the government. But
if he can drive up the cost of private insurance with mandates and
subsidize government insurance with the taxpayers' money, how long
do you think it will be before we have the "single payer" system has
he has advocated in the past?
Mandates by politicians are what have driven up the cost of
insurance already. Politicians love to play Santa Claus and leave it
to others to raise prices to cover the inevitable costs.
Politicians have driven privately owned municipal transit systems
out of business in many cities, by simply imposing costs and
restricting the fare increases needed to cover those costs. The
federal government can drive out private insurance the same way that
local politicians have driven out private municipal transit and
replaced it with government-run transit systems.
Barack Obama's insistence that various dangerous policies are not
in the legislation he proposes sounds good but means nothing.
Unbridled power is a blank check, no matter what its rationale may
be. No law gave the President of the United States the power to fire
the head of General Motors, but TARP money did.
When there are "advisory" panels on what treatments to approve
and the White House's existing medical advisor has complained of
Americans' "over-utilization" of medical care, what does it take to
connect the dots?
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, 