The road to government-run health care begins with deception. Here's the evidence:
George Will yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos had some profound insights and statistics during the roundtable discussion. He said, in the president's words, it'll keep 'em honest. The public option will keep 'em honest. "To try to preserve the government as a lagoon of honesty, you can argue, refuted by anybody who reads any budget of any administration."
So the Obama administration says the public option will keep the private sector honest. It's the public sector that's dishonest. It's the public sector that's corrupted. Number two. George Will says this. "Obama says it will play by the same rules as the private insurers, and therefore, won’t drive them out of business." Now, if you play by the same rules, what's the point? If you're going to have a public option that plays by the same rules as the private sector, then what's the point of having a public option? In real terms, there is no reason for it. If what you're saying is it's not going to be any better -- and we all know it can't be -- then why do it? "Third, it’s necessary to give what Secretary Sebelius said a choice to the consumers. There are 1,300 entities offering healthcare plans in this country. Another one--" i.e., the government "-- isn't going to change that."
Thirteen hundred entities offering health care plans in the country today and Sebelius says that Obama needs to have a public option to give consumers a choice. They've got choices out the wazoo. "Taking this a step further, many of these 1,300 entities will likely cease to exist if government gets involved." So the end result is that there will be far fewer options for people. The idea is to wipe out the private sector with the public option, that's its intent. George Will again: "Finally, there’s the argument that the American people are not smart enough to handle something as complicated as healthcare and have a competitive market. They’ve done rather well in computers." But you see, this gets to the common thing I continually attempt to remind everybody of, and that is the government liberals, Democrats look at everybody with contempt. None of us are smart enough to survive without them paving the road, guiding the way, and steering us.
George Will was not done, though. He is talking to Donna Brazile. He said, "You talk about the 46, 47 million uninsured. Fourteen million of them are already eligible for other government programs and haven’t signed up. Ten million are in households with household incomes of $75,000 a year and could afford it if they wanted to. Furthermore, an enormous number in that 47 million are not American citizens. Sixty percent of the uninsured in San Francisco are not citizens." So this 47 million uninsured number that the left and the media is always throwing around is disingenuous, it's largely irrelevant. They portray this number and it's grown from 42 to 43 million during the Clinton days, now it's magically up to 47 million and is just as accurate as their homeless number was inaccurate. So of the 47 million, they try to paint this picture that the system is so unfair and so mean that it's leaving 47 million Americans out, and it is not doing so.
