Technocracy in America

The partisan and misleading speech that President Obama delivered to a joint session of Congress last week revealed the president's preferences--more government mandates, regulations, and taxes--when it comes to refashioning the American health care system. It also showcased the contempt for debate and smug sense of moral and intellectual superiority that is now as much a part of contemporary liberalism as sympathy with the nuclear freeze movement and the RainbowPUSH coalition was two decades ago.

The way the president expresses his disdain is telling. He assumes that, given the facts, any rational person would reach policy conclusions identical to his. "I have no doubt," he said, "that these reforms would greatly benefit Americans from all walks of life, as well as the economy as a whole." If only everybody had read Atul Gawande's June New Yorker article on McAllen, Texas, the president believes, then there would have been none of those rowdy town halls.

So why has the White House already missed its self-imposed deadline for reform? Why do more Americans disapprove than approve of the president's approach to health care? Why did Obama's approval rating drop steadily--among independents, precipitously--throughout the summer? The answer, he said, is "all the misinformation that's been spread over the past few months." There is no legitimate basis for opposition. There are only lies.

"Americans have grown nervous about reform," the president continued. "Prominent politicians" whose "only agenda is to kill reform at any cost" have spread "bogus claims" about his health care plan, scaring a gullible public into disapproval. For example, there is the "misunderstanding" that "federal dollars will be used to fund abortions." Some also "claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants," which is "false." And the idea that "we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens" is a "lie."

The president said that he "will continue to seek common ground in the weeks ahead," and if "you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen." Tell that to the Republicans who have been shut out from the legislative process on four of the five congressional committees working on health care.

"I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than to improve it," Obama said, conveniently dismissing the widely held view that the best improvement to the Democrats' grandiose plans is to scuttle them and start over with a set of targeted insurance reforms--which could pass both houses of Congress with bipartisan majorities. No, Obama "won't stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are," as if he did not already have the backing of all the special interests--the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Association of Retired People, the American Hospital Association, Big Labor, etc. He "will not accept the status quo as a solution," as if that is what supporters of consumer-driven health care are advocating. "If you misrepresent what's in this plan," Obama said, "we will call you out."

Yet one could just as easily call out Obama for distorting the claims made against his proposals. In a world where money is fungible, Obamacare's taxpayer subsidies could indeed be used to purchase insurance plans that cover abortions. Furthermore, the president has not adequately explained how "the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally" when (1) Democrats in the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce committees defeated amendments that would have withheld benefits from illegal aliens, (2) the president has not put forward an effective verification system of his own, and (3) who would ever tell José and Maria No mas when they show up at the emergency room in need of care?

The president was correct when he said that his proposals do not include "panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens." But that is not quite what the "prominent politician" was saying when she wrote,

Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these "unproductive" members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care.