Dick Morris on 'Death Panels'

I'm on Dick Morris's email list so I get two or three things from him a week. Lately, he has been all over this health care debate and has really done yeoman's work to try to get this abominable legislation defeated. For the record, he and I would not always agree on what the role of government should be in our lives. Neither would I attack the Obama health care reform with the same aruments he does (keep in mind that Morris was the political brains behind the Clinton administration). But he makes some salient points in this op-ed piece published in the New York Post a day or two ago and I thought I would post that piece here. I do not know what the etiquette on re-posting this is, so I went ahead and included a couple of links at the end so you can check out his site, his youtube videos, and his book. I hope that makes it okay. Enjoy.

IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published in the New York Post on August 17, 2009

Washington is all atwitter about "death panels": President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the "death panel" charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president's plan.

Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome.

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:

* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.

* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care systemwide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.

* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.

Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

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Dick Morris, Barack Obama, and George Orwell

Dick Morris nails Obama once again, this time in the New York Post.

From an op-ed piece published today in the New York Post:

"President Obama's rhetoric last night summoned the memory of 1984, George Orwell's novel of a nightmarish future--where the slogan of the rulers is 'War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.'

The president assures us that he will cut health-care spending. . .by adding $1 trillion to health-care spending.

He says that 'health-care decisions will not be made by government'. . .while he sets up a new Federal Health Board to tell doctors what treatments they can offer and to whom and under what circumstances.

Obama told the media, 'I will free doctors to make good health-care decisions'. . .by telling the physicians what to do. . . ." - Dick Morris

Dick Morris: Obama is a one-term President

You know Dick Morris, right? He was the brains behind Bill Clinton. Got him elected several times as governor of Arkansas and then twice as President. Dick Morris is a pure political animal. He eats, sleeps, breathes, and speaks politics. He may not always be right, but he is always worth listening to. Here's what he is saying about Obama's Presidency:

Finally, Obama has laid a trap for himself. Just as the economy is coming out of its recession -- in 2010 and 2011 -- and he begins to run for reelection, he is going to face massive inflation. The money supply has more than tripled since October of 2008 and is going up each week as the Fed buys Treasury bills and other securities to "monetize the debt" (i.e., give other people money so they can lend it back to the government and charge it interest for doing so). With each new infusion of cash, the problem of avoiding inflation becomes particularly severe. Obama could well lose the elections of 2012 because of the inflation his deficit has created.

Of course, we all know that the only way to put the inflation virus back in the test tube is to trigger a new recession, this time caused by massive increases in interest rates, as Fed Chairman Paul Volcker did in 1979. If the recession doesn't doom Obama to a single term, the inflation will. And if the inflation doesn't get him, the subsequent recession will.

The deeper he gets into his term, the more it is apparent that he threw it all away when he first took office and demanded over $1 trillion in stimulus and supplemental appropriation spending. He was doomed to lose the game right after he received the first kickoff.

To read the whole article click here.

Dick Morris - Catastrophe

Dick Morris, along with his wife, has just published a new book entitled Catastrophe. Here's what it looks like.


I like Dick Morris. I don't always see eye to eye with him and I certainly did not like him while he was serving as the brains behind the Bill Clinton political machine, but I do like him now and I most certainly respect his political opinions.

Having said that, lately he has been scaring me to death. What scares me is that I think he may be right about this guy Obama and about what may be happening to our country over the next few years. Check out this little video about his book.