An interesting article from an otherwise Obama supporter.
From Real Clear Politics:
Falling Out of Love with Barack Obama
I continue to be a supporter of President Barack Obama. He has had several outstanding successes. The major one has been a positive change in the economy due primarily, I believe, to his hand-picked team of economic advisers who, from all indications, have fashioned an effective economic recovery plan. The recovery still has a long way to go, but using the language of my doctors at the hospital in which I recently spent six critical weeks recovering from open-heart surgery, "All the numbers are going in the right direction." I also believe his reaching out to our allies and those not allied with us has somewhat calmed the world's roiled waters.
Yet, strangely, the President's support is waning. A recent CNN poll gave him a C-minus after 200 days in office, whereas at the end of his first one hundred days, he got almost universally a B-plus.
And on the subject of Mr. Koch's open heart surgery:
In order to keep costs from rising, most people acknowledge the need for some kind of limitations on spending. Rationing of public monies makes sense, e.g., should public monies be used to give a kidney or heart transplant to a 90-year-old patient, when it is necessary to reduce the costs of Medicaid and Medicare to keep them solvent? Both programs are totally government funded and operated. I would say no.Then the question becomes what about private funds being used by an individual willing to buy gold-plated insurance to provide unlimited medical expenditures for their health and survival? Should the government be able to limit such expenditures? My answer would be no.
I speak from personal experience. I have been told that the cost of my hospital care, including the services of 20 doctors and 72 nurses and medical technicians over a six-week period may ultimately cost a million dollars. My private insurance policy is paid for by my law firm, Bryan Cave LLP, and because I still work full-time, that insurance policy is my primary one, not Medicare, even though I am 84 years old. Will that continue to be the case under any law signed by President Obama or will I be denied the right to spend my own money and my law firm's for such unlimited coverage?
The President, I believe, has said that there will be no restrictions on private insurance coverage, other than to expand that coverage for all by, for example, denying the insurance companies the right to reject persons with prior existing medical conditions. But he has not spoken loudly enough, nor has there been any discussion on the premiums that companies will be able to charge in such cases.
Most alarming for people like me, who at 84 years of age recently needed a quadruple bypass and aortic valve replacement, are the pronouncements of President Obama's appointee, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who, according to a New York Post op ed article by Betsy McCauley, former Lt. Governor of the State of New York, stated, "Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, 'as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others' (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008)." He also stated, "...communitarianism' should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those 'who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens...An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.' (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96). "
I had posted about Doctor Emanuel's statements before here: What people are saying - Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm's brother)
To think that a turd like this has a hand in setting the Health-care policies of the United States is unreal. Rope. Tree. Some assembly required...
