Paglia Eviscerates Obama's Health Plan Operation

The never short on words, Camille Paglia who openly admits her admiration for Obama on the international stage (I don't agree, but I respect her honesy and opinion), clearly has no patience for the man, his staff or his handling of the health care reform:

But who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Obama's aggressive endorsement of a healthcare plan that does not even exist yet, except in five competing, fluctuating drafts, makes Washington seem like Cloud Cuckoo Land. The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.

Paglia is right on point and I think more and more Democrats, who aren't in the kool-aid drinking club are beginning to realize that they have been sold a bill of goods in the form of Obama, particuarly when it comes to domestic policy.

The fact is, we simply don't have a clue what is going to be in a final health care reform package and that scares a lot of people. What scares me is not what is in the bill, but what is not in the bill, i.e. those things that have been left unsaid, undone or are delegated to agencies with no accountability to anyone for their actions. The old adage that the devil is in the details holds very true here. The bills are bad enough, but the details are even worse.