The Health Care Debate Turns Ugly, Who’s To Blame?

William R Collier Hr
Sun Tzu famously said that when leaders are not clear they are to blame for the confusion of their subordinates and he urged leaders to be absolutely clear in their communications. It is clear that in the health care debate there is no clarity. What is true, what is not true, what’s in the Bill, what’s not in the Bill, and WHICH Bill is ACTUALLY the bill we should be debating?

There are basically three primary reasons why the health care debate is turning ugly:

1. There is no certainty as to WHICH Bill is being debated and those Bills that are known are so large and wordy, and so filled with lawyer’s doublespeak, that we do not really even know WHAT is being proposed.

When this happens it is possible for opponents to say things are there that may not be there, innocent items can sound ominous, and advocates can use the confusion to try and paint their opponents as disingenuous or ill informed.

You cannot have a reasonable debate when the subject matter under debate is a moving target and when the proposals that are out there have so much confusing language that could mean different things depending on how you read what has been written.

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NOTE:
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When politicians dismiss their own voters and accuse them of being part of some conspiracy and when advocates for this restructuring of our health care under the aegis of the Federal Government assert that any organized effort to protest their plan is now illegitimate, as if the people who may respond to appeals by any organization, including even the Republican Party (if indeed such organizing occurred) do not have legitimate concerns that should be addressed. When an elected officials dismisses the “legitimacy” of protesters on the grounds that those protests may have been “organized” rather than dealing with the content of the protest those elected officials delegitimize THEMSELVES.

2. Constituents are not getting accurate, or reasonable, answers from their Representatives and Senators, especially those who are for the President’s initiative on health care “reform”, which is more accurately “health care restructuring” where 100′s of individual insurance companies, hundreds of thousands of health care providers, and millions of patients are replaced as the primary authority on health care by one entity, the Federal Government, which will have supreme authority over decisions and plans.

Too many statements in defense of this health care restructuring are not making sense to constituents and, indeed, many of these advocates for this new structure have not even read the Bills being proposed. In the Senate there is not even a written Bill, although Senators who are defending this restructuring are accusing their opponents of misrepresenting what is in the Bill.

3. The demonization of opponents is a tactic of propagandists and was advocated by the likes of Lenin, Goebbels, and Alinsky but this typically does not move the debate forward and if the target of such demonization is not a fringe but a sizable plurality the effect is the opposite of what is desired: it will tend to radicalize more people against you rather than to turn public sentiment against the target groups.

Democrats are accusing their opponents of using scare tactics and of “obstruction” and they are calling them Nazis and even “un-American” instead of answering concerns with facts. For instance, if people are opposed to Abortion being paid for by such plans then why not either say you think it should be provided or cite where it is prohibited?

If people are concerned about these end-of life counseling sessions, which appear to NOT be mandatory, but which many fear should not be part of this at all because this could very easily lead to this, their concerns are ignored. These concerns come from the fact that the people Obama has hired as Czars who handle such such issues are known to have said they are for managing health care so that the young, the disabled, and the old are not “invested” in because they are not productive members of society. President Obama’s science czar once proposed to put sterilization chemicals in drinking water, a fact which he has denied, albeit not to the satisfaction of many.

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NOTE: Here is a quote from Ezekiel Emanuel who proposes a “Complete Lives System” that is alarming many: “Strict youngest-first allocation directs scarce resources predominantly to infants. This approach seems incorrect. The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects…. Adolescents have received substantial substantial education and parental care, investments that will be wasted without a complete life. Infants, by contrast, have not yet received these investments…. It is terrible when an infant dies, but worse, most people think, when a three-year-old child dies, and worse still when an adolescent does.”

HotAir covers this here —>
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Not knowing WHAT Bill is THE Bill in question while not having clear language that is beyond dispute, not giving straight answers and not being able to cite specifics in the Bill the elected official might be defending is causing mistrust and opening the door to potentially false impressions, and demonizing opponents while presuming that the METHODS by which people are organizing are a greater issue than the CONTENT of their protest makes people feel that they have no peaceful recourse and delegitimizes the elected officials who stoops to such tactics more than it turns the public against the protesters.

Who is to blame for all of this?

Let’s return to where we started. When things are not clear the leader is responsible. President Obama and his allies in Congress are NOT being clear-

1. there is lack of clarity as to WHICH Bill is being debated while the language in present Bills is open to debate and with such a moving target and such obtuse lawyer-speak it is reasonable for people to be suspicious, especially when we consider the people who are associated with this plan, people like Mr. Holdren, the “science czar”, who is a known advocate of “population control”

2. there is lack of clarity in answers to questions and the elected officials defending this restructuring have not read the Bill or have no Bill to cite and some of the answers given do not square with what is in the Bill, and what people sincerely believe the effects of the Bill will be, namely the creation of a single payer system, which President Obama is on tape calling for and even went so far as to say that he was for an incrementalist approach, which many see manifested in the language of the Bills and proposals that are being proposed.

3. instead of debating the concerns civilly the leaders who are for this restructuring of our health care are trying to marginalize people by calling them names and making the METHODS of their protest, rather than the CONTENT of their protest, a justification for ignoring them- one lawmaker actually told a constituent outright that he was not from his district and had no right to even speak, only to discover that the man was from his district and had tried NUMEROUS times to set up a meeting on health care.

It is easy for some to criticize something opponents say by asserting that “that’s not what the Bill says”, but knowing that President Obama and his associates have publicly said they wanted to implement their plan gradually because people were not “ready” for it, knowing that the language of these Bills is lawyer double-speak, and knowing that we are not even sure WHICH bill is the one that will pass, indeed just as we saw the 300 page “amendment” added to the House’s version of the “Climate” Bill at the last second, who can be sure WHAT will REALLY be in a final Bill?

When dealing with the government the standard is not to prove that the government’s proposal is “guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt” but, rather, that the proposal is “innocent beyond a reasonable doubt.”

When we see a moving target, unclear language, when we see that the people proposing a Bill who have called for things that are outlandish, as with population control and President Obama’s “incrementalist approach” to a single payer system, and when we see ELEMENTS of those proposals in this bill, it is reasonable for us to assume the worse and demand absolute clarification and clear language that specifically prevents anything approaching that which people fear may be there.

On the issue of the “End of Life Counseling”, which many fear is a road to euthanasia, it would be best if Holdren and anyone associated with his population control ideas be fired, that language forbidding ANY mandatory counseling by any authority, company, insurance company, or etc.. be included, and that the President publicly disavow even the foggiest notion of “population control” or other proposals not merely by firing ANYONE who is associated with such proposals but by speaking against such things in the strongest possible language. To simply dismiss people who characterize this counseling as death counseling or who fear where it may lead “liars” is beneath contempt: it IGNORES the underlying issues, the vagueness of the language, the fact that we are not sure WHAT will be the final Bill, and the fact that people associated with this Bill are actually proponents of population control.

What is needed is clarity and an honest effort to assuage any apprehensions, starting with firing un-accountable “cars” who are for population control. This is not happening! One might be tempted to say that President Obama has shown more politeness to Hugo Chavez, whom he embraced, than to Americans who oppose him, whom he told to “get out of the way” and “not do any talking.”

President Obama and his allies are playing word games and trying to posit the idea that those who are concerned about this are liars, that the opponents have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt of any kind that such intentions exist, and that anybody who does not assume the BEST intentions in a plan that is supposed to be implemented by people who have been associated with exactly the kind of radical proposals that such language seems to be a precursor to should just shut up and get out of the way.

There are TOO many issues, concerns, and fears to be able to handle in one article, but in the end the real question is this: if you are not happy with the amount of power you feel insurance companies have over your health care, then is transferring such authority to the Federal Government and the likes of our “population control” czar (the “science czar”) going to make things any better for YOU?

If the problem is TOO much red tape and too little accountability, why not reduce the red tape and make the insurance companies more accountable to market forces and to YOU rather than replacing red tape from insurance companies with red tape form the Federal Government and why make the insurance companies more accountable to Federal Agencies.

If the problem is rising costs, then why say Federalizing Health Care, directly or indirectly, will reduce costs when central economic planning and government control over ANYTHING has not historically been proven to help in this regard?

If the problem is that 5% of the population does not have access to health care, why does it then follow that those who have health care are responsible for paying for the health care of other people and why is it needful that such service be managed by the government?

Those who say “we are for quality, affordable health care for ALL” act as if ONLY the Federalization of Health Care will accomplish this, even as proposals that are rooted in addressing this issue by removing artificial obstacles and artificial costs which are the ROOT cause of the problem are completely ignored.

If the problem is lack of access to health-care, then why is there no relief for hospitals and medical facilities that are paying for services without compensation and why is there nothing in these proposals, near as I can tell, that would increase the number of health care providers?

If transparency and accountability are the aim, why not allow people to buy health care insurance across state lines and why not require that health care providers clearly state their prices and then provide incentives to insurance customers who shop around?

If the “rising cost of technology” is such an issue, why not offer prizes, like DARPA does, for technology breakthroughs and then make such technology available “patent free” to US companies?

If people can’t afford health care, why not make it easier and simpler to use health savings accounts and allow people to roll them over year to year instead of making you have to use what’s in there before a new calendar year starts? (Instead, the Bills proposed terminate the ability to use Health Savings Accounts for non-prescription medicine and make things more complicated.)

If rising costs to individuals are the problem, why not have safeguards against lawsuit abuse, and why not address the issues of unfunded mandates that require health services to be provided but that have no reasonable means of re-reimbursing the providers, or even addressing those who simply refuse to pay ANYTHING for the services they receive?

If we are somehow supposed to be giving the government a free pass and assume the best about them, why is it fashionable to assume the WORSE about every insurance company, to demonize doctors as President Obama did on national TV, and to demonize opponents?

The debate on health care is getting ugly and the reasons for this is clear: those who are pushing the Federalization of Medicine are not being clear, not giving real answers, and they are demonizing their opponents rather than addressing their concerns. Those who are proposing Federalizing Medicine have the BURDEN OF PROOF, not those who are not making such proposals

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