Throw Mama from the train

Obama is out pushing a health care reform bill he hasn't read and guaranteeing that it will:

• provide lower cost
• promote choice
• cover everyone
• be more efficient
• won't increase the deficit
• give free ice cream

OK, I'll admit that I lied about that last part if you will acknowledge that Obama simply cannot achieve the other five goals without drastically lowering the amount and quality of the health care Americans now receive and have come to expect.

Just last week, Obama told an audience that attended a town hall meeting at Broughton High School in North Carolina, "[N]o one is talking about some government takeover of health care."

Of course not, but that is the goal.

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This clip of Obama offered by BreitbartTV contains the following quote from the SEIU Health Care Form on March, 24, 2007:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. ... A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

Most of us don't want a panel of unelected bureaucrats deciding what treatments our doctor can and cannot offer us. That is why President Obama is now hiding behind meaningless rhetoric, while some of his Democratic colleagues in Congress have been much more candid.

Obama's initial plan is to lure us into an HMO, or the "government option," which will hamstring your physician and put a gatekeeper between you and every specialist on the planet.

Initially, you will have plenty of choices, or so it will seem, but there is a catch. If the government is allowed to dictate what insurance companies can offer us, plans A through Z are all going to be different shades of the same color.

At some point you will discover that the private plan you have is exactly the same as the government-run plan, but guess what? The government-run plan will be cheaper. The government-run plan doesn't have to show a profit. It has unlimited resources – our tax dollars – and it will use those resources to drive the private plans out of business.

Once the door slams shut, the cost-cutting will begin in earnest, and Mama goes under the train.

Congress plans to pay for this $1 trillion-plus noose around our necks with a $500 billion cut to Medicare, the program that is set to explode in the next few years as the baby boomers began to retire.

How, pray tell, do you cut $500 billion from a program that is expected to grow by 30 percent? You limit the amount of health care the elderly can consume. It's called rationing. It's in there and it's real.

If you want to know how government-run health care works, examine the system in Great Britain where the elderly are routinely given the shaft.

Here in America, people are living longer and enjoying more active lives that ever before. We have come to expect that if a hip, knee or a heart valve wears out, we will get another one promptly. If we let the Obama administration put the "public option" in place, very soon it will become the only option – and Mama (and Papa) will become expendable.

One of the most disturbing parts of H.R. 3200 is Section 1233, which provides "counseling" to seniors to encourage them to sign documents that will limit the care they receive should they become seriously ill. In the event they do not take this bait, the government ultimately will decide what end-of-life care they will receive or, more correctly, be denied.

The fall guy in the system will be the poor, overworked – and soon to be underpaid – primary care physician who will be expected to limit care and treat conditions that he or she should refer to a specialist.

In the case of coronary disease or cancer – the most common problems affecting the elderly – this is tantamount to using a handyman to do the work of an experienced plumber or electrician. Simple jobs are no problem, but for more complex issues, the results can be disastrous.

Larry: You killed somebody! You killed a person. You're a murderer. You took a life!

Owen: You're right. You're right, I'm no good. How could I do that?

"Throw Momma from the Train," 1987

You can read the fine print in H.R. 3200, which is chilling, or you can save time and use your own common sense.

Move away from this train. You are about to get creamed!