Obamacare: Mandatory Socialized Medicine

Obamacare
Mandatory Socialized Medicine

Note: You might want to start at the Obamacare Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine.

Obamacare is being developed by leftist politicians who are determined to take over the medical profession regardless of public opinion. The approach being taken by the Democrats is fundamentally dishonest.

Subsections:

Liberals resort to lies and emotional outbursts to silence their opposition.

What's the rush?

Secrecy, closed-door meetings, and midnight votes.

Liberals are not telling you that Obamacare will bankrupt the United States.

Obama's Big Health Care Summit: A one-ring circus.

Secrecy, closed-door meetings, and midnight votes

Valerie Jarrett: Obamacare Process 'Was All Very Transparent,' 'Open and Honest'. Thursday on a Facebook live event on the Democratic Party Facebook page, former White House senior advisor to President Barack Obama Valerie Jarrett said the legislative process to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was "very transparent." Jarrett said, "I mean we had hundreds of meetings. We made hundreds of amendments. It was all very transparent. The President had a great meeting where we invited in the Republicans for an open press session to answer all of their questions. It was a collaborative effort. The intent was to make it bipartisan, and the intent was to be open and honest with the American people. Our scoring was put out for everybody to see because we wanted people to understand before the decision was made what was at stake and what we were trying to accomplish."

Tortured tale of govt. spending your money rather than agreeing to answer questions on Obamacare. In 2013, when the government repeatedly provided false, misleading and incomplete information regarding Obamacare.gov, I filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to obtain the facts. Under the law, I should have received the material within about 20 days. It was relevant to news stories I was investigating at the time for CBS News. Like many federal agencies, Health and Human Services (HHS) simply broke FOI law. My FOI request went unheeded. Eventually, though the news value of the withheld material had long since subsided, I filed a lawsuit to obtain the documents. Most people can't afford to challenge the government's illegal responses to FOI. It takes time and money. The FOI experts at Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit against HHS on my behalf. Instead of ordering HHS to promptly comply with FOI law, the Justice Department provided attorney to defend HHS in court (at taxpayer expense).

What's Obama Hiding In Those Secret ObamaCare Documents? Being the "most transparent administration" in history apparently doesn't mean complying with a congressional subpoena to find out why more than half of the ObamaCare co-ops have failed. That's what the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is learning, at least. It has subpoenaed information relating to the 23 nonprofit co-op insurance companies that ObamaCare established with $2.5 billion in government loans. The co-ops were supposed to provide price competition against commercial insurers, but last year many pushed for and got huge, double-digit rate hikes. Even so, more than half of the 23 set up have failed already, and it's likely that eight more will collapse this year.

Upton expands investigation into 'secret' Obamacare meetings. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton is expanding his investigation into the meetings between special interest groups and the Obama White House that set the stage for the passage of Obamacare, sending document requests to 12 industry groups and unions that played a key role in the negotiations. In April 18 letters to the groups, Upton asks for extensive details and documents about each organization's interactions with the White House in regards to the health care law. The requests come as the Obama White House has so far declined to provide its documents about the meetings.

Bureaucrats Secretly Implement ObamaCare. When ObamaCare passed in the partisan manner in which it did, the liberal establishment and its ever growing army of pipsqueak transcribers in the mainstream media said ObamaCare's passage would be a boon for Democrats and mocked those like Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli who spoke out against ObamaCare and called the measure unconstitutional, particularly the individual mandate requirement that would compel citizens to buy health insurance they may not have otherwise wanted to purchase.

Midnight Votes, Backroom Deals, and a Death Panel. Last weekend while you were preparing for the holidays with your family, Harry Reid's Senate was making shady backroom deals to ram through the Democrat health care take-over. The Senate ended debate on this bill without even reading it. That and midnight weekend votes seem to be standard operating procedures in D.C. No one is certain of what's in the bill, but Senator Jim DeMint spotted one shocking revelation ... Apparently Reid and friends have changed the rules of the Senate so that the section of the bill dealing with this board can't be repealed or amended without a 2/3 supermajority vote.

Pelosi tells C-SPAN: 'There has never been a more open process'. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) defended Congress' work on a healthcare bill Tuesday [01/05/2010] saying the process has displayed historic transparency, just as C-SPAN mounts an effort to open the negotiations. ... "We will do what is necessary to pass the bill," Pelosi said.

Hiding health bills behind closed doors. The House passed its version of the bill on a Saturday night. The Senate held its key procedural vote at 1 in the morning, and then provided a lump of coal in our stockings by forcing full passage of its bill on Christmas Eve. The House leadership banned consideration of all but one amendment not offered by leadership itself — forbidding debate on more than 150 of them — then provided just 24 hours for members to study the bill's final text. The Senate leadership inserted so many tawdry last-minute items that analysts are still finding jokers in the deck 11 days later.

It makes a person wonder... what's the rush?

Obama promised 8 times during campaign to televise health care debate. The health care revolution will not be televised despite what President Obama promised you two years ago. Obama has broken his campaign promises to make the health care debate a transparent process after saying he would do so on at least eight ocassions during his 2008 White House run.

Gibbs Refuses to Address Obama's Broken C-SPAN Promises. Given the generally sycophantic attitude of the White House Press Corps, Robert Gibbs may have been caught off guard when he started facing some tough questions on President Obama's apparent flip-flop regarding his many promises to broadcast health care negotiations on C-SPAN. Gibbs stubbornly refused to answer multiple questions about the broken promises.

Pants on fire: Let's go to the videotape!
Count the Lies: Obama Vowed Eight Times to Televise Healthcare Negotiations. Detailed, Explained, Frequently Repeated: Obama's Healthcare-on-C-Span Lie.

Obama Reneges on Health Care Transparency. President Obama wants the final negotiations on health care reform — a reconciliation of the House and Senate versions of the bill — put on a fast track, even if that means breaking an explicit campaign promise.

Dems against democracy. As DC Democrats slink behind closed doors to craft a final health-care bill — thousands of pages long and sure to sap the nation's economic future — Americans need to ask: Just what are Dems so ashamed of? "We will do what is necessary to pass the bill," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted, as she and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid moved to forgo a panel to finalize legislation.

Behind closed doors. Andrew Malcolm reports that the Democrats are going behind closed doors to cobble together the final Obamacare bill that they intend to ram through Congress without needless procedural detours. Today C-SPAN's Brian Lamb wrote a letter to the leaders of Congress asking them to allow cameras in the room for the final negotiations on the health care bill.

Behind Closed Doors, Part II. Scott noted yesterday the Democrats' decision to craft their health care bill — presumably the final one — in secret, and C-Span's offer to televise the proceedings. Since then, the story has exploded. Newspapers across the country have editorialized against the Democrats' corruption of the legislative process.

Dems iron out Obamacare in secret. Reid and Pelosi are meeting privately with each other and with President Obama to work out differences between their respective chambers' versions of Obamacare. They are thus ignoring the long-standing requirement that a bipartisan conference committee with representatives from the Senate and House meet in public to iron out such differences, and that on-the-record votes be taken in both chambers on final passage of the committee's report.

Obama and the Vampire Congress. Meet the Beltway bloodsuckers. They convene in the dead of night, when most ordinary mortals have left work and let their guard down or are lying asleep in bed. Pale-faced and insatiable, the nocturnal thieves do their nefarious business in backrooms and secret chambers. Their primary victims? Taxpayers, the free market and deliberative democracy.

Government Health Care Competition: The Audacity of Hope Against Experience. One key item on President Obama's health care agenda is to "establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage." The chairmen of five congressional committees have all agreed that there should be a government-run plan that competes against private health insurers and is available to all Americans. Senators Kennedy and Baucus; and Representatives George Miller, Henry Waxman, and Charles Rangel, have been engaged in secret negotiations to hammer out a deal.

The Editor says...
What happened to Obama's promises about "open government"?

A stealth budget bill. President Obama is insisting on arcane procedural language tucked away in the budget resolution conference report that will dramatically expand the federal government's control over your personal health care decisions and our nation's health care system, all without a single hearing or a public debate.

Democrats' Stealth Approach to Universal Health Care. What ever happened to Preisdent Obama's promise of an open government? ... Because health care is one of the big drivers of government spending in Obama's budget — nationalized health care for Democrats has been a dream since FDR — Democrats have decided to use a process called "reconciliation" to pass the budget bill in the Senate (Reconciliation waives the need for a super majority vote of 60; a majority vote will do), so there is no chance that Republicans will be able to derail the bill.

20 Questions About Obamacare. The mainstream media has stopped asking any tough questions and has simply taken on the role of a love struck cheerleader waving pom poms for her dashing boyfriend, the quarterback of the health care plan. So, let's talk about the basic questions YOU should have answered to your satisfaction before you consider supporting any health care bill that comes out of Congress.

President Obama — We've Got Questions. Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required that the final health overhaul bill and a plain-English cost estimate be available online for 72 hours before any vote. Mr. President, a short summary isn't enough! Since a biased media isn't asking, we've got questions. Do you have answers?

Pelosicare's Broken Window. Between the typical Chicago thug political style of Barack Obama and his henchman, Rahm Emanuel, and the shell-game CBO manipulations of Harry Reid, far more is unseen than seen in the proposed legislation. As if to make that point even more obvious, the Administration is rebuffing C-Span's request that it live up to Barack Obama's often-repeated promise to have these specific negotiations take place in public view, indeed specifically on C-Span. Health care reform is now literally unseen.

More about Obama's many broken promises.

Liberals are not telling you that Obamacare will bankrupt the United States
... which may be the intent.

Health Care Law Projected to Add $6.2 Trillion to U.S. Deficit. It turns out President Obama was right when he said his health care law wouldn't add one dime to the federal deficit. Figures from the Government Accountability Office suggest that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will in fact add 62 trillion dimes over the next 75 years.

ObamaCare: How The Law Might Become Even More Of Burden. All the parts of the Democrats' overhaul of American health care hang off the individual mandate, which requires those without health care insurance and aren't in a government program to buy a plan or face a fine. The fine, which won't go into effect until next year, is $95, or 1% of income, whichever is higher. By 2016, it will be $695, or 2.5% of income. While the penalty will be a burden to many, it's still small when compared to the price of a health care plan.

As 2013 Begins, Get Ready For An ObamaCare Tax Onslaught. The third wave of ObamaCare taxes began on January 1, the latest blitz before the tsunami of changes from the health overhaul law hit in 2014. These new and higher taxes are being levied to partially pay for ObamaCare's massive new subsidies for private health insurance and expansion of Medicaid.

Obamacare Now Estimated to Cost $2.6 Trillion in First Decade. The latest estimate, as the chart [in this article] details, is that Obamacare will cost $2.6 trillion dollars in its first real decade. The bill does not fully go into effect until 2014, therefore the estimate begins with that year.

ObamaCare Putting Squeeze on Health Savings Accounts. In anticipation that the Supreme Court might rule in favor of ObamaCare, Avik Roy wrote in Forbes magazine that Health Savings Plans (HSAs) would be negatively impacted and possibly forced out of existence. HSAs were first allowed under law as part of President George W. Bush's prescription drug program passed in 2003. At the time it seemed a common sense answer to a sticky problem: over usage of health insurance benefits and the consequent rising costs to pay for that over usage.

GAO: IRS to Spend $881 Million in Implementing Obamacare Over Just Four Years. The Internal Revenue Service is expected to use $881 million of taxpayers' money to implement the first four years of Obamacare, including about $500 million that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) diverted to the agency, according to a federal audit. The new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit refers to ObamaCare — the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law in March 2010 — as a "significant effort for IRS."

HHS signs $20M PR contract to promote healthcare law. The Health and Human Services Department has signed a $20 million contract with a public-relations firm to highlight part of the Affordable Care Act. The new, multimedia ad campaign is designed to educate the public about how to stay healthy and prevent illnesses, an HHS official said.

Ouch! Decade of Obamacare to cost $1.2 trillion. How much will Obamacare — call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if you like — cost over the next 10 years? More than you've been led to believe, reports Charles Blahous of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. To be specific, he projects it will add $1,160 billion to net federal spending over the next 10 years and at least $340 billion to federal budget deficits in that time.

It's Not Just the Mandate: ObamaCare's Other Infringements. ObamaCare supporters were hit with more bad news recently when the Congressional Budget Office announced that the health care law would cost nearly twice the original estimates: $1.76 trillion over ten years rather than $940 billion. Of course, such "unexpected" cost overruns are nothing new for government programs. When Medicare was passed in 1965, it was predicted to cost $12 billion by 1990. In reality, it cost a whopping $110 billion, almost 10 times more than predicted. But the escalating economic costs of ObamaCare will pale in comparison to the escalating losses of freedom.

ObamaCare's Costs Are Soaring. This would not be the first time a government program exceeded its projected cost. When Medicare was passed in 1965, for example, the federal government estimated it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Medicare actually cost $110 billion in 1990. In the case of ObamaCare, one of the principal sources of the lowball estimate used to justify the law is related to the insurance exchanges. The CBO originally estimated that one million Americans would lose their employer-sponsored care and be forced into the exchanges. But a McKinsey & Co. study in June 2011 showed that 30%-50% of employers plan to stop offering health insurance to their employees once the health law is implemented in 2014.

Why the doubling of Obamacare's cost matters. A CBO score with a price tag below $1 trillion was absolutely essential to getting Obamacare passed in the House. No price tag under $1 trillion, no Obamacare. That is why the bill was designed to delay implementation: to purposefully hide the true cost. Now that time has caught up the Democrats shenanigans, the CBO is reporting that the real 10-year cost of full implementation is more than double what Democrats advertised in order to get the bill passed.

Surprise: Obamacare's Price Tag Nearly Doubles. Two years ago this month, Democrats were on the brink of jamming through a massive federal intrusion into the American healthcare system. ... As the fateful vote approached, Democrat leaders desperately needed a fig leaf to conceal the budget-busting math of their statist designs. To that end, they handed the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office a hopelessly distorted set of "facts" and assumptions, off of which the group was required to render a cost estimate known as a "scoring." Pelosi et al got what they asked for.

$1.76 Trillion ObamaCare Cost Doubles Down On Failure. We had to pass it to find what was in it, we were told. As the lies and consequences of health care reform become known, the Congressional Budget Office reveals its true cost — another lie all unto itself.

Obamacare Cost Jumps $111 Billion; No One Notices. It is tempting to ignore President Obama's budgets, since no one seriously intends that they be adopted; his FY 2012 budget was voted down in the Senate, 97-0. Yet every now and then, interesting information is buried in the fine print.

New CBO report reveals Obamacare is Madoff-class fraud. Remember Nancy Pelosi's famously idiotic and recorded rant on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, while Speaker, wherein she declared ... 'we've got to pass the [2,000+ page healthcare] bill — so we can learn what's in it?' The first painful lesson Democrats learned after passing it, was that voting 'against the will of the people' cost them nearly 90 seats in both the House and Senate during the tumultuous November 2010 mid-term elections — most of whom were replaced by Tea Party Conservatives, who have been challenging and exposing their corrupt liberal/socialist ideology ever since.

CBO: Obamacare to cost $1.76 trillion over 10 yrs. President Obama's national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law. Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO's standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama's pledge that the legislation would cost "around $900 billion over 10 years."

Obama's Health Care Duplicity No Longer Debatable. Many of us knew at the time that Obama's drive for socialized medicine had nothing to do with reducing spending — the last thing that is ever on his mind. We knew that it wasn't about increasing access to care — because socialized medicine schemes always ultimately reduce people's access to quality care. Looked at in a light most favorable to Obama's intentions, it was but another utopian scheme to put everyone on a level playing field. Looked at honestly and realistically, it was a Trojan horse to expand government control over our private lives that would result in less, worse and more expensive care.

ObamaCare: Twice as expensive as promised, and getting worse. The big ObamaCare news this week isn't really "news" to anyone who was smart enough to see through the President's obfuscations and fraudulent accounting when ObamaCare was being rammed down our throats. No group has ever been more utterly vindicated than ObamaCare critics, who were right about absolutely everything they said.

Republican probes $111 billion jump in cost of healthcare law. A powerful House Republican wants the Obama administration to explain why it's asking for an extra $111 billion to implement part of the healthcare reform law. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) is asking about a spike in the estimated costs of subsidies to help people buy private insurance — a central, and expensive, component of the new healthcare law. The administration's budget request this year included $111 billion more for subsidies than its request last year.

Is she bragging or complaining?
Obama Cabinet Secretary: 'The Private Market is in a Death Spiral'. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday [2/28/2012] that the days of private health insurance are coming to an end in the United States. "The private market is in a death spiral," Sebelius said, contending this would be the case whether or not President Barack Obama's health care law had been enacted.

Cost overrun on Obamacare. Everything government touches seems to turn into a gigantic mess. Consider the Obamacare promise to have the government cover everyone who is uncoverable. The program began a little more than a year ago. The promise was this would cost taxpayers "only" $13,026 a year per enrollee. The actual cost is more than double the price promised by President Obama.

Less Liberty, Higher Costs. The Obama administration's recent decree — that, under Obamacare, Americans would no longer be free to offer or to choose new health plans that don't include complimentary coverage of birth control, morning-after pills and the abortion drug ella — would likely lead a great many people to switch to much costlier birth control, according to a new piece published by Kaiser Health News.

Jim Cramer: Obamacare is going to derail economy. Mad Money's Jim Cramer this morning [2/13/2012] said that CEO's are paralyzed when it comes to job hiring, because of Obamacare. "We are really going to have a hard time hiring once this plan is in place," he said, insisting that the CEOs that he talks with cite Obamacare as the number one issue blocking hiring. "This is front and center of what could derail the economy," Cramer said, adding that businesses will eventually put the jobs in Mexico or Asia to avoid the extra costs.

Your Friday IRS regulation dump: Obamacare's job-killing medical device tax. While Obama sycophants are busy trumpeting deceptive jobs numbers, the administration is quietly moving forward with job-killing Obamacare regs and taxes. The IRS today released rules to impose the $20 billion Obamacare medical device tax scheduled to take effect next year. At a time when the White House is touting its government initiatives to champion "innovation," the Obamacare innovation tax on medical device/diagnostic manufacturers will kill an estimated 43,000 jobs.

Where to start in repealing Obamacare: On March 23, 2010, President Obama forever altered the American health care system by signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. Its advocates promised that the measure would reinvent American health care and reinvigorate the American economy. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., put it, "This bill is not only about the health security of America, it's about jobs. In its life, it will create 4 million jobs, 400,000 jobs almost immediately." Boy, were they wrong. It's becoming more apparent with each passing day that Obamacare will devastate American health care as well as the health of our citizens — and further damage our country's fragile finances.

Obamacare Stalls the American Economic Engine. Obamacare has been in place for a little more than 20 months, and the picture is finally becoming clear. What we now know is that Obamacare is destroying jobs and opportunity. At the time it was being debated, [Democratic National Committee chairman Tim] Kaine said this government-run health care legislation is "good news for the health of our economy," but since its passage we have seen 20 months of unemployment topping 8 percent. The reasons can be found in Obamacare's thousands of pages of legislation and regulations.

Tax buried in Obama health-care plan will kill 43,000 jobs. The president's health care overhaul includes a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices that will send the durable medical equipment industry into intensive care, eliminate 43,000 jobs, and whack $3.5 billion from local shops and communities, according to a new study by two free market economists.

A hidden jobs-killer. ObamaCare was signed into law in late March, and the hiring freeze began. In the following months, the economy added an average of just 6,500 jobs per month (net of layoffs) — less than a tenth the pre-ObamaCare average. This doesn't prove that the health law is a major cause of the problem. But there is no question that the jobs recovery stalled after ObamaCare passed.

Obamacare or America? The debt-ceiling debate has revealed that there are two types of politicians in America today: those who still claim we can afford Obamacare and those who will tell you the truth. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the debt-ceiling debate, other than witnessing establishment politicians in complete denial of the mess they've made, is the fact that the Orwellian-named Budget Control Act of 2011 does so little to actually, you know, control the budget.

Obamacare Tragedy Primed To Further Explode the Deficit. President Obama bludgeoned Obamacare through Congress on the claim, backed by CBO, that it would not add to the deficit, even though it adopts or wildly expands three entitlement programs. As I discuss in my new book, America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, close analysis of the CBO score and additional new data indicates that, quite to the contrary, Obamacare will likely add $4 to $6 trillion to the deficit over its first 20 years, and possibly more.

The States Can't Afford ObamaCare. Behind this week's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson overturning ObamaCare on constitutional grounds, there is a deeper economic reality. The states can't afford it. That's a primary reason why 26 states joined in the Florida lawsuit to nullify the federal law.

Boehner: ObamaCare Will Bankrupt Our Nation. The House Republicans' move forward to repeal ObamaCare has made Congressional Democrats fighting mad. The Democrats' new mantra on Capitol Hill is that repealing their $1.2 trillion health care law will increase the deficit. The GOP response has been both incredulous of that claim and hard-hitting.

Obamacare Sticker Shock: Taxing Over 15,000 Medicines. Nancy Pelosi warned us we'd have to pass Obamacare to find out what's in it. And what we're finding we don't like at all. Higher insurance premiums are hitting families hard. Medicare Advantage has been decimated. Millions will be forced into government-run Medicaid where long lines and rationing await. If we like our insurance — too bad.

Every Awful Thing You Need to Know About Obamacare. Obamacare will cause health care costs, not just to rise, but to soar. It will cause health care costs, not just to rise, but to soar. This is why more than a hundred U.S. companies that already offer low cost health care insurance to their employees have already requested waivers. If Obamacare's intent was to destroy the health care insurance business — and it is — it has succeeded.

Guess What Greece Has To Jettison? Greece was told that if it wanted a bailout, it needed to consider privatizing its government health care system. So tell us again why the U.S. is following Europe's welfare state model.

CBO Increases Estimated Cost Of Obamacare by $115 Billion. Hot off the Presses, the Congressional Budget Office released a revised estimate of Obamacare, adding about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over ten years than the original cost projections which were already suspect. The additional spending would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to about $1 trillion.

CBO Hikes ObamaCare Cost Estimate By $115 Billion. The Congressional Budget Office today [5/11/2010] released an analysis of discretionary spending in the law, and found that those costs will "probably exceed" $115 billion over 10 years. At a stroke, that erases almost all of ObamaCare's $143 billion in budget savings based off rushed, incomplete CBO projections given just before the decisive House vote in March.

Spendthrift Nation. Socialism gave us our present problems in the form of "entitlement" programs and neither Democrats nor Republicans have been able to resist adding new ones. A new government report from actuaries for Medicare and Medicare on the cost of Obamacare reveals that medical costs will skyrocket rising $389 billion in 10 years. In my home State of New Jersey, we finally elected a Governor who understands that doing this is nuts.

Barely on the Tarmac, Obamacare is Poised to Crash. ObamaCare's first 10 years of operations would cost $2.5 trillion. This massive new expenditure, plus Washington's other spendaholic commitments, explains Obama's eagerness to jettison his oft-repeated commitment not to raise taxes on Americans who earn less than $250,000 annually. To finance ObamaCare and their other pricey projects, many Washington Democrats crave a national sales tax.

DeMint: "President Obama Thinks Americans are Stupid". After Obamacare passed, The President announced that "it will reduce our deficit by over $100 billion over the next decade and more than $1 trillion the decade after that." However, Rick Foster, the Actuary for Medicare, predicts the opposite. ... President Obama acts as if the American people are naïve. Yet Americans know enough about Obamacare and government to understand that a massive expansion of a new entitlement program won't lower healthcare costs or balance the budget.

ObamaCare: An Unmitigated Disaster. [Scroll down] Finally, officials are owning up to what most Americans already knew. ObamaCare means higher costs and lower quality; ObamaCare means rationing and higher taxes — including a Value Added Tax (VAT). It means mandating and penalties. President Obama and his liberal colleagues on the Hill jettisoned the world's best health care system for the dubious honor of having achieved "health care reform." Now, in addition to figuring out how to pay for the trillion dollar government takeover of health care, we have to untangle the budgetary gimmicks, bureaucratic mess, and disastrous financial crisis that the nation faces as a result.

Where's the Administration's Cost Estimate? The chief actuary for Medicare has released a memorandum providing cost estimates for the final health legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president. Amazingly, the HHS secretary tried to suggest that the memo confirms that the legislation will produce the favorable results that the legislation's backers have touted for months. That's nothing but spin. In truth, the memo is another devastating indictment of the bill. It contradicts several key assertions by made by the bill's proponents, including the president.

Bond Markets Reflect the True Cost of Obamacare. Not many people noticed amid the Democrats' struggle to jam their health care bill through the House, but in recent weeks U.S. Treasury bonds have lost their status as the world's safest investment. The numbers are pretty clear.

Indict Obama, Pelosi and Reid. One problem with Obama's plan (unless he actually is working on eliminating our economy) is that his so-called "stimulus" did nothing to create a single sustainable job or cause one percentage point in our downward spiral to reverse. The other problem is that it was all one colossal bare-faced lie. Remember his campaign promises that the debate would be seen on CSPAN? If you missed that you were hiding in a hole somewhere, because he repeated it at nearly every whistle stop. Harry Reid and Pelosi repeated those promises and then closed the doors when the debate began.

A New Leviathan? As written, the Senate's 2,079-page health bill would make HHS, already by far the largest federal department in terms of spending, even more large and powerful. Even now, the HHS budget of more than $800 billion makes it one of the 15 largest economies in the world. It's that big. And the Senate, heedless of the old advice that bigger isn't better, is about to make it even bigger. According to Washington's scrappy Examiner.com, the Senate bill would grant HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sweeping new powers, "including the authority to decide what medical care should be covered by insurers as well as the terms and conditions of coverage and who should receive it."

Obama's Health Care Rot, Calls For A Massive Boycott. Both nationalized health care and cap and trade are red herrings of the highest magnitude and represent one of the greatest cons and Ponzi schemes ever devised by man. Neither is supported by science, a national need, nor is either constitutional. Either one will break the bank. Both of them together will sink the good ship America in a sea of red ink where it will rot forever on the rocky bottom, never to surface again.

Did someone mention Cap and Trade?

Dare to Defeat ObamaCare. Outlines and drafts of the key House and Senate bills began to emerge last week, and the grim reality of what the Democrats in fact have in mind has started to exercise an undeniable effect upon the politics of health care. The fact is, the Democrats' proposals are a liberal wish list of expansions of the role of government in health care, combining an array of taxes, regulations, incentives, and mandates aimed over time to create a massive and unfunded new entitlement that would limit patient choices, ration care, and bankrupt the Treasury.

The Party Of Yes: 6 Ways Democrats Are Hurting America. [#3] Socializing medicine: The most hilarious thing about the Democrats' attempt to engulf the health care industry in the inky blackness of the federal government is their primary selling point: that a government takeover will actually lead to reduced costs. How's that plan working out with Medicare so far? Oh yeah, it's on track to bankrupt the entire country. So let's expand that — what could go wrong? Well, besides all the features that usually come along with socialized medicine: reduced quality of care, long wait times for operations, and allowing old people to die in order to cut costs.

Obamacare's epic contradiction: The Obama administration reported last week that Social Security will begin paying out more than it receives in 2016, a year sooner than previously predicted. Medicare's plight is even worse: It started paying more than it collects last year. And it will deplete its trust fund in 2017, two years earlier than expected.

Obama's 'Public' Health Plan Will Bankrupt the Nation. Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least. So let's be serious when evaluating President Obama's goal of universal health care, and the idea that it's a cost-cutter. Can't happen. Won't happen. Costs are going to explode. Think of it: Can anyone name a federal program that ever cut costs for anything? Let's not forget that the existing Medicare system is roughly $80 trillion in the hole.

Just How Stupid Are American Voters? If the Socialist Obama is elected, we can expect businesses to flee this country to more friendly locations overseas. They will take jobs and cash out of our economy and tax revenues out of our national coffers. Socialized medicine will bring the destruction of our healthcare system.

The Big Problem with Health Care Is Cost, Not Access. The year the administration and Congress have spent on health care reform — with all the backroom deals and bribes, the lack of transparency, and the 2,000-plus-page bills drafted by lobbyists and unread by House and Senate members — have attached an unsavory smell to the process that has soured it for many former supporters of the reform effort. Now the decision to try a "jam it through" final push using the budget reconciliation process seems to demonstrate to the public a heightened arrogance by those in power, who seem to be ignoring the public's wish for a smaller, less partisan reform effort at this point. Since 85% of the population is insured, the primary concern for most of the currently insured is cost control, not expansion of access.

Onward with Obamacare, regardless. [Scroll down slowly] Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health-care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it. Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.

One Giant Government Leap Backwards. More spending. More tax hikes on investors, businesses, and individuals. New government boards to control prices, ration care, and redistribute income. The Obama administration is basically taking a giant government leap backwards that the country doesn't want to take. One of the most galling features of this plan is a taxpayer-subsidized government-insurance entitlement for people earning up to 400 percent above the poverty line, or nearly $100,000 for a family of four. In other words, a middle-class health-care entitlement that will add millions of people to the federal dole.

Voters aren't buying cost control promises on Obamacare. President Obama's opening pitch for his health care plan was a promise to save American consumers money. A year later, they're still not buying it. A complicated and shifting White House message strategy, an intense, election-year atmosphere of public distrust, and conflicting claims about savings have undermined Obama's efforts to win support for the plan.

Obama's Health-Care Plan Will Hurt More Than Help. The Obama health-care takeover plan is an enormous, unconstitutional expansion of the federal government. It will cost the American taxpayer at least $1 trillion, and perhaps closer to $2.5 trillion. President Obama's plan heavily taxes those who provide the products, services and payment for health care — including drug makers, insurance companies, medical device manufacturers and employers who pay for most of the nation's health care. All this raises costs...

ObamaCare — The Worst Deal of All Time. ObamaCare is divisive. Its objectives aren't clear. Its numbers don't add up. And it has a good shot at wrecking both our health-care system and the public treasury by 2020. ... Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) puts the real cost on ObamaCare at $2.3 trillion. That is a lot of money — especially in a country that already has $13 trillion in debt. It is more than 50 times what the AIG bailout will cost us.

Obama: Serving Ambitions, Not Citizens. This recession isn't going to end as long as Obama is in office. The recession is an essential part of the "Progressive" plan to transform the foundation of the country from capitalism to socialism. ... Obama's healthcare plan does nothing to reduce the costs, but instead attempts to subsidize them with taxpayers' money which will only make the problem worse.

On Obamacare: Just Say No. [Scroll down] At the recent White House health care summit, Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-Wisc.), challenged with clarity the massive accounting gimmicks and hallucinatory economic assumptions that Democrats have used to present this massive budget busting disaster of a bill as a prudent deficit cutting measure. Ryan, speaking for Republicans, showed that the 10-year costs are in reality $2.3 trillion, rather than under a trillion as claimed. It's all been ignored.

CBO: Obamacare Would Cost Over $2 Trillion. The CBO's most recent analysis is out, and it's not likely to convince wavering House Democrats to jump to the Obamacare side of the fence. Even the Democrats are granting that the latest version of their proposed health care overhaul would cost $69 billion more than the previous version.

Fox News Poll: 79% Say U.S. Economy Could Collapse. The latest Fox News poll finds that 79 percent of voters think it's possible the economy could collapse, including large majorities of Democrats (72 percent), Republicans (84 percent) and independents (80 percent).

Resistance Is Not Futile. Any real debate about health-care reform has to be centered on solving the problem of cost. Ultimately, there are only two ways of doing it. The first approach is to have government control costs through some form of rationing. The alternative is to empower families to make their own health-care decisions in a system where costs matter. The fundamental question is about who is going to do the controlling: the family or the government.

U.S. will pay heavy price for health care. Fifteen months into his presidency, Barack Obama has demonstrated by getting his health care legislation through Congress that there is no constitutional propriety he will not tear asunder in building his legacy. It did not matter to President Obama, in pursuing his legacy, the cost of ObamaCare to the U.S. economy, and who will pay for it or how.

7 Prickly Questions for ObamaCare: [#1] We used to hear, constantly, about 45 million uninsured people. ObamaCare will insure 32 million of 'em. Those left uncovered are, for the most part, illegal aliens, and the President wants to grant them the status of legal residents. Would that qualify them for ObamaCare and swell the ranks by half — and thereby increase costs by another half a trillion dollars?

Obamacare: Running the numbers. The real cost of health care reform, as recognized by the nation's business community, is just beginning to take shape. Bloomberg Business Week (picked up by Drudge) reports that SEC filings by such companies as AT&T, Caterpillar, AK Steel Holding, and 3M Co., reflect their anticipated costs of compliance with ObamaCare. Keep three things in mind: a.) these write-downs are not reflected in any CBO estimates of the cost of funding health care reform; b.) in order to protect stock prices, these companies have a huge incentive to understate the costs they actually face; and, c.) the true cost of health care reform is equal to taxes raised from American taxpayers plus decreased wealth accruing to American taxpayers.

The Government Plantation Forever? Let's do a quick thought experiment. The price of apples keeps going up. The government decides that every American must buy apples. But some can't afford them. Government starts controlling how much apple farmers are paid, it mandates that every single American buys apples and subsidizes those under a certain income level so they can. Will the price of apples go down, stay the same or go up?

The Innate Immorality of Liberalism. In my last column, I briefly addressed the issue of morality — or rather the lack of morality — that animates modern-day liberalism. Understand that I also consider the "compassionate conservatism" of the Bush administration to be equally liberal and equally immoral. If your father went into his grandson's room, found his wallet and took all the money in it, what would you call it? I know what I'd call it. ... It's called stealing, and I can't think of a single moral code on the planet which condones it.

Top 10 Reasons Obamacare is a Disaster: [#1] The Congressional Budget Office sets the projected cost of the healthcare package from 2010 to 2019 at $940 billion, reducing the deficit by $138 billion. The true cost of the new law will be far greater. The legislation uses budgetary gimmicks to make it appear cheaper, including omitting cuts to Medicare provider payment rates, double-counting savings from Medicare and the CLASS Act, indexing benefits to general inflation rather than medical inflation, and delaying expensive provisions of the bill. When these costs are accounted for, the new law is likely to cost $2.5 trillion.

Obamacare will make every day feel like April 15th. New taxes on investments, taxes on medical supplies, taxes on drugs and health insurance, and taxes on you if you are just breathing... the list of taxes Americans will face just got a lot longer thanks to ObamaCare. The health overhaul plan just enacted represents the largest tax hike in U.S. history — $569 billion over 10 years through a dizzying array of taxes and fees that promise to frustrate taxpayers at every turn.

ObamaCare's Ever-Rising Price Tag. White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod argued earlier this year that health-care reform would become more popular after it passed, boosting Democrats in the midterm elections. "We have to go out and sell it," he told the National Journal, adding in an interview in Newsweek that "people [will] see the benefits that accrue to them." That's not quite how it has worked out.

Fiscal Fraud of Obamacare Snowballing Already. The fiscal consequences of the socialized medicine scheme enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress just two months ago are already beginning to snowball. Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was one of the key architects and advocates of Obamacare. He was back on the House floor on Friday [5/28/2010] delivering an urgent plea to fellow Democrats that inadvertently — or, perhaps, unavoidably — revealed the fraudulent nature of our new national health care regime. It was supposed to save the taxpayers money, remember?

Step Right Up and Get Your Free Health Care... The Obama administration on Wednesday issued regulations requiring new, private health plans to cover preventive services without charge — no co-payments, deductibles, or coinsurance. The free preventive services will include counseling to quit smoking and "counseling to address obesity and help children maintain a healthy weight."

The Editor says...
If you think all those services are "free", you are living in delusion.

The CBO Warns the Nation; Is Anybody Listening? The CBO made it clear that ObamaCare — the health reform package that was shoved down the nation's throat — did not "diminish" the problem; plus the economists at the CBO think that the president's pledge of tax cuts for the middle class will make matters worse and that health care costs will continue to "spiral out of control." Indeed, some analysts believe the Obama health care package locked in the unsustainable health care spending path.

ObamaCare 'Shocker': Budget Math Doesn't Work If People Actually Use It. This new report from the liberal group Families USA contains this eye-popping paragraph...

Medicare and ObamaCare. The problem with the truth is that it keeps breaking out at inconvenient times. The most recent breakout occurred just as the Obama administration launched another campaign to persuade a skeptical populace that the Affordable Health Care Act really is. If most people missed the event, it is because the mainstream media did its best to downplay what the WSJ called "the most damning fiscal indictment to date of the Affordable Care Act."

ObamaCare Is Already Costing Americans. Six months ago, the health care reform bill became law. Prior to its passage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condescendingly announced, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." President Obama also assured Americans that health care "reforms will finally reduce the costs of health care Families will save on their premiums." Contrary to the president's assurance, unfortunately, the health care reform legislation is already causing a substantial increase in medical insurance premiums.

The cost of Obamacare is a time bomb. In fighting against Obamacare repeal this week, Democrats portray their health care law as a money saver, claiming Republicans would add to the deficit by abolishing the legislation. But in their franker moments, the bill's authors admit that "reform" could be something of a time bomb that will cause exploding health care costs down the line. One top Senate aide plainly stated last summer, "This is a coverage bill, not a cost reduction bill."

Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare: Next week, the U.S. House of Representatives will be voting on an historic repeal of the Obamacare law. While there are many reasons to oppose this flawed government health insurance law, it is important to remember that Obamacare is also one of the largest tax increases in American history. [This article includes] a comprehensive list of the two dozen new or higher taxes that pay for Obamcare's expansion of government spending and interference between doctors and patients.

Thanks, Obamacare: Get Ready for "Targeted Dumping" of Coverage. One of the single biggest price tags of Obamacare is its premium subsidies, which will shoot through the roof under this scheme. As Jeffrey Anderson notes in his post, the CBO has already severely underestimated how many Americans will require subsidies under Obamacare. They also grossly underestimated how much the overall law would cost.

Obamacare 'Bomb' Set to Blow Up Private Health Care System? Rick Ungar gleefully writes in Forbes that a rarely discussed provision of Obamacare will put us on "an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans." The provision to which Ungar refers is "called the medical loss ratio, [which] requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers' premium dollars they collect — 85% for large group insurers — on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit." He writes that this is "the true 'bomb' contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we've seen in quite some time."

Obama's Big Health Care Summit: A one-ring circus made for television.

This event occurred on Thursday, February 25, 2010.

Health Care Summit — 'Fatal Attraction' Hits the Beltway. Like a possessed, rejected maniac the president refuses to allow the idea of a massive restructuring of our health care system to fade. You're just not that into his health care bill? Too bad. He won't be ignored.

At Health Care Summit, Republicans Calm, Collected, and Camera-ready. Speculation was rampant that today's health care summit could be a trap for Republicans. ... The concern for the GOP going in was that President Obama, with his supreme oratory skills, would back the GOP into a corner and get them to agree to legislation out of sheer political necessity. The national news media would, of course, be lying in wait, cameras rolling, anticipating a slip up to fill the evening broadcasts.

Obama listens at health summit, but mostly hears himself. President Obama pledged to "listen" at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he'd be listening to his own voice. By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes — nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a "talk clock" kept by GOP aides.

Price: 'Arrogance, Arrogance, Arrogance'. "Arrogance, arrogance, arrogance" — that's what Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, the head of the Republican Study Committee in the House, says he has seen from President Obama during the first part of the health-care summit. "I don't think his aggressiveness will play well, but that's his style. He's a leftist to the nth degree. In his professorial way, he is trying to dictate the terms and facts of the debate. What's unfortunate is that he is using so many inaccuracies to build his argument."

Obama Hogs More Time, Declares "I'm the President". After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted that Democrats' opening statements had lasted twice as long as Republicans, President Obama responded that his time shouldn't count in the calculation. "There was an imbalance in the opening statements, because I'm the President," Obama declared. "And I didn't count my time in terms of dividing it evenly."

HC Summit Didn't Change Anything. Despite 7 hours of talking, Thursday's White House health care summit ultimately did nothing to change the dynamics of the debate.

The big bipartisan lie. If President Barack Obama really wanted to show he's serious about winning over Republicans on health care reform, he could offer up some key concessions at Thursday's summit, like caps on malpractice awards or allowing insurers to sell across state lines.

Summit of arrogance. It's hard to have a "negotiation" or even an honest, spontaneous discussion about a health care bill days after the president filed his latest effort and when congressional Democrats are still talking about a parliamentary maneuver to ram through some version of a bill. So what the nation got yesterday — finally — was a televised showcase filled with political posturing and lectures from Professor Barack Obama who seems convinced that he has a monopoly on the truth.

More Boor Than Cure. Boy, that didn't work. Nothing in the health-care summit promised greater progress or movement.

The Summit Sideshow. The Summit Show was designed by Democrats for Democrats, to give Mr. Obama an all-day stage to inspire and exhort his party to charge once more into the health fray.

Coburn rebuts Obama on medmal and health care reform. Oklahoma Republican senator Tom Coburn says he had a "pretty positive attitude" leaving today's health care summit at the Blair House in Washington. ... But now, after reading news reports saying that Democrats are set on using reconciliation to ram the Senate bill through Congress, Coburn is wondering if today's summit was pointless.

Professor Obama schools lawmakers on health-care reform. Members of the opposition party may not have fully understood that they were stepping into Prof. Obama's classroom, and that they were to be treated like his undisciplined pupils. Obama controlled the microphone and the clock, and he used both skillfully to limit the Republicans' time, to rebut their arguments and to always have the last word.

The Verdict on Obamacare: The White House was hoping the health-care summit would create momentum among Democrats to push their bill through Congress. It almost certainly did not work. Both sides repeated points that have been made countless times over the past year.

The Sham Summit: Thursday's much-hyped health "summit" seemed mainly designed to show the president telling Republicans, "Those are all legitimate points." Democrats admit it was a setup to pass their $2 trillion plan. Not long before the president assembled Democrats and Republicans at the Garden Room of Blair House for a health care powwow, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., let it all hang out on the House floor, roaring that "every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry."

Obama and Democrats' Unprecedented Attack against American People and the Obama Summit: During Thursday's Health Care Summit, I viewed the patently totalitarian Marxist-Democrat Party telling We-the-People that we no longer matter to them. ... Each and every time the questioning and contradictions from the right to false statements made by the dictator-in-chief became too uncomfortable for his fragile ego' or simply presented the truth in too bright a light, Obama shut down the questioner with reprimands similar to 'you're off of the subject' or 'stop your talking points' or 'the campaign is over and I won'.

Obama and Democrats' Unprecedented Attack against American People and the Obama Summit: Despite increasingly overwhelming opposition from the American people to Obama's and the Democrats' Orwellian plans for us, they are moving even faster and harder to oppress us and shut us up. This is how tyrannies are formed, folks. And we are now firmly smack-dab-in-the-middle of our own.

He's No FDR. Is Obama the new FDR? The answer is no. ... For Obama, the summit was a last-gasp attempt to revive his moribund legislation. More than likely, it will fail. The reason is tied to what is probably the greatest difference between FDR and Obama. Roosevelt took command of Washington. Obama hasn't.

Obama tells summit, 'We're not campaigning anymore'. President Obama brushed off criticisms by Sen. John McCain in today's summit, noting that "we're not campaigning anymore. The election is over." That struck me as mildly amusing right away, because many would argue that Obama never really stopped campaigning and never really started governing after the 2008 election.

Someone Needs to Tell the President His Health Care Plan is Dead. The day before yesterday's White House health care summit, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told reporters: "The only way this works is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then, depending on what the package is, the reconciliation provision that moves first through the House and then comes here." When Conrad was reminded that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has repeatedly insisted that the House will not pass the Senate bill until the Senate passes a second bill that fixes the first, Conrad replied: "Fine, then it's dead."

Obama Shows Testy Side at Health Care Summit. Of all the hats President Obama tried on at Thursday's seven-and-a-half-hour health care summit, it appeared the one he was most comfortable wearing was that of the prickly professor.

The Road Ahead for ObamaCare: The "health-care summit" has come and gone, and it was a good day for the Republicans. They were sharp and focused, the Democrats meandering and ineffectual. The latter came off more like wishful ideologues or naive amateurs than like practical realists with sensible solutions. They seemed disconnected from economic and budgetary realities, and from the electorate.

No health care summit bounce, apparently. The first evidence on whether Barack Obama got a bounce from the health care summit comes from the overnight Rasmussen polling. The short answer: No. ... Rasmussen shows Obama's strong approval at 22% and strong disapproval at 43%, for a net approval index — this is Rasmussen's term — of minus 21.

Applying Alinsky: Why Obamacare Makes No Sense. [T]he ordinary American can be excused for being confused, frustrated, and angry. That's exactly where President Obama, the Chicago political mafia around him, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi want people to be. At one point in the pointless all-day meeting on Thursday, she even claimed that passing Obamacare would create four million jobs overnight! Even for Speaker Pelosi, that's a new level of insane babble.

No Waste of Time. [Obama] tried to bully the Republicans, hog the time, put down John McCain, and glare at [Rep. Paul] Ryan — but he simply failed to out-debate and outshine his opponents, whose demeanor and fluidity trumped his own. The Left doesn't want debate in the Senate either. They want this muscled through by reconciliation. The time for debate is over, they keep saying, because — of course — they have lost the debate.

Why Obama's Great Bet Will Fail. This week when President Obama concluded the seven-hour, made-for-television faux summit on health reform, and more or less announced his intention to cram his signature bill through the Senate in the form of reconciliation, he sealed his choice in moving forward with a great wager. This is a bet that he is hedging to see if the electorate will be more forgiving of him once he's able to claim that he's accomplished something — anything — in his first two years in office.

The Facilitator-in-Chief Failed Miserably. Never attempt to facilitate a meeting when one has a vested, biased interest in the outcome. This is insulting and disingenuous to opposing participants. The successful facilitator must be transparently objective and unbiased in regard to the outcome reached by the group.

An FDR lesson Obama missed: The health care summit was not the demolition derby the Democrats expected, instead it's a pothole the president and his party will have difficulty climbing out of. The first public-opinion polls this week will measure who won and who lost. But the prospect of a lot of changed minds in the wake of the talkfest is a small prospect. The president was in his favorite role, the long-winded professor trying hard to be patient with half-bright students who hadn't done their homework. Like most liberals, he suffers from a severe occupational hazard. Anyone who disagrees with him must be dumb, unlettered and redneck crazy.

Obamacare: Still a Threat to Your Life. What the health summit made clear to me is that the Democrats do not understand what the Republicans are talking about on health care. Indeed, they have no idea what the American people are talking about either, or why growing majorities of us oppose what they are trying to do. But it gets even worse. The health summit made clear that the Democrats do not understand what they themselves are doing on health care. They have been misled and manipulated by left-wing ideologues.

The Great Healthcare Robbery. "No one has talked about reconciliation," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared during last week's health care summit. It was a lie shocking in its boldness. ... [A] week before, Reid himself had said publicly that reconciliation was an option for passing the plan, Politico.com reported. Of the Senate's 59 Democrats, 23 had already signed a letter urging the president to pass the plan via reconciliation by the time Reid said "no one" was even talking about it.

Missed Opportunities at the Healthcare Summit. The Health Care Reform Summit was a snooze fest but could have been more exciting had the Republicans taken advantage of a few golden opportunities to expose this farce hosted by the Democrats and President Obama. ... Sadly, Republicans are too polite and respect the office of the president more than its current occupant who dared to say, "I don't count my time because I'm the president." He showed disrespect to the senators and congressmen by dismissing their titles even though they always referred to him as "Mr. President." While the White House claims that the Republicans were given equal time to state their positions, the truth is that the Democrats had nearly twice as many minutes to vent — and what did they say?

Obama through the Looking Glass. If there was ever a question as to what President Obama meant when titling his autobiography "The Audacity of Hope," he certainly offered Americans a peek through the looking glass during the televised health care debate two weeks ago.

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