Let’s take a quick look at numbers behind the Senate health care bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid claims his bill will cover 94 percent of the population at a cost of $849 billion over 10 years.

The population of the country is roughly 300 million.

At this point you need to understand one thing – there are two vastly different numbers used for the uninsured. The first number consists of all the people uninsured at some point in a given year, whether they are citizens or here illegally. The second number is the chronically uninsured, those who have spent an extended period of time (years) without insurance. The number for the former, the one I like to call the “kitchen sink” number, is one with which you are undoubtedly familiar: 47-49 million. The number for the latter, the chronically uninsured, is one you may not have heard before: 12-15 million.

How these differing numbers come to be is a story for another day, but let’s analyze both of them for the sake of argument.

Accepting Reid’s statements at face value, his plan will cover 94 percent of the 300 million US population, or 282 million Americans.

Currently, using the chronically uninsured number, there are 285-288 million Americans with health insurance. Using Reid’s own estimate, his plan would mean between 3 and 6 million more people with health insurance.

Using the larger kitchen sink number, Reid’s plan would cover roughly 30 million more people than are covered right now. But at what cost?

Insuring 30 million people at a 10 year cost of $849 billion would mean a per person cost of $28,300. Over 10 years that would be $2,830 a year, but this isn’t a 10 year plan. The bill before the Senate doesn’t take effect until 2013, well after the next Presidential election. And while the Congressional Budget Office score covers the years 2010 through 2019, only in the years 2013-2019 is anyone actually insured. So we’re looking at a window of 7 years, which give us an average cost of $4042.85 per person, per year people are actually being insured. The average person could find a cheaper health insurance plan.

However, if we assume all the money numbers are correct and the government is ready to spend $4042 per person, per year to cover just the chronically uninsured, and we multiply that number by the 12-15 million chronically uninsured, this plan would only cost between $339 billion to $424 billion, less than half the price of the Reid bill.

Since we can see there is a huge discrepancy between what they’ve said they want to do (help people get insurance) and what they’ve actually proposed (massively expand government at a great cost to you and all future generations), do you think maybe Reid’s 2074 page health care “reform” bill might be about something more than simply insuring people? Might it be about control?

Just a thought.

*NOTE: Bear in mind that CBO cost estimates on health care have never been correct, 5 years after its inception Medicare ended up costing what CBO said it would cost in 25 years. And these are just basic math calculations that don’t take into account the massive bureaucracy that will eat up a large percentage of these costs while inserting itself in your medical decision. Anyway…

On Saturday, Smith sent an email to the union’s executive committee attacking Limbaugh on the grounds that he doesn’t bring people together enough to successfully join the NFL family.  Smith wrote:

I understand that this ownership consideration is in the early stages. But sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred.

In reading Smith’s email you would think NFL some random island of harmony and peace.  If you’ve read a sports section in the last few decades you’d know Utopia on the gridiron is as elusive as anywhere else, except perhaps Hollywood’s fictional Cuba.

Who exactly is in Smith’s NFL Players Association?  Just to name a few of the most obvious members of Smith’s “America at its best,” there are Donte’ Stallworth of the Cleveland Browns who hit and killed someone in a drunk driving accident earlier this year and cut a plea deal under which he only served 24 of 30 days with 2 years house arrest (under which he’ll be able to train for his return to the NFL).

Michael Vick, more famous for cruelty to animals than anything he’s done on the football field.

And let’s not forget Plaxico Burress, who shot himself in the leg with an unlicensed gun in a New York night club and is now serving 2 years in prison.

In the Burress case, the NFLPA argued in favor of Plaxico being able to keep his million dollar bonus even though Burress has clearly broken the law and luckily only shot himself in his stupidity. Smith, in a statement about the decision, said:

This decision is a real win for the players. It means that clubs can’t impose additional discipline by claiming back signing or roster bonus monies after a suspension, either by a club or the league.

So, at least in Smith’s mind, the NFLPA “overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred,” but it embraces and fully supports those who break the law and, only through a fluke, shoot themselves and not others.

Just to be clear, a man who fought to preserve a bonus for a man who brought an illegal loaded weapon to a public place where alcohol is served and discharged that weapon opposes the prospect of a man with whom he disagrees politically owning a struggling franchise in the NFL.

Thankfully Smith has zero input in the final decision, he’s only attempting to muddy the waters of any deal to appease some of his members who, in the face of a complete lack of evidence and facts to the contrary, claim Limbaugh a racist. The union’s version of “unity” is strikingly similar to that of liberals in this country and their love of “diversity.”  In the world of liberalism, diversity is a word symbolizing a bunch of different colored, like-minded drones.  Tolerance ends when disagreement begins, and no arrow in the quiver is to be left unfired to attack those with which they disagree.  Just ask Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele or Condi Rice how accepted they have been by the liberal elite champions of “diversity.”

Everyone expects a union goon to be a union goon, even if their goonery is accomplished with words while wearing a suit, so Smith’s actions come as a surprise to no one. Nor should the fact that this long-time DC lawyer has only ever given money to Democrat candidates, though he hasn’t given much, surprise anyone. (Though what is a surprise is the fact that Smith didn’t donate to retired NFLPA member Lynn Swann who ran for governor of Pennsylvania in 2006 as a Republican.)  What should surprise, and worry, those he represents is the fact that he would attempt to allow his politics to interfere with the conducting of his business in their name.

Smith took no poll of the NFL players to find out their opinion on the subject, and he has no business deciding to whom anyone can sell a company they own.  It’s not as though Limbaugh would quit his top-rated radio show to run the day-to-day operations of the Rams.  Limbaugh is one of a group of people possibly interesting in forming a company to purchase the team, it’s not just Rush alone.

All Smith has accomplished with his email was to publicly attack a potential owner in a hypocritical, unprofessional way at a time when the NFL owners and NFLPA need to work together to extend their collective bargaining agreement before it expires and the possibility of a strike or lockout looms closer to reality.

In a world where millionaire murderers and felons make more in a week than the average American earns in a year, attacking the most popular man in a very popular medium may not have been the best way to achieve that goal. Smith should focus on cleaning his own house, a house rife with problems, instead of worrying about someone players will only see on Sundays from the owners box.

It would seem that Smith would have more important things upon which to focus, considering the recent study that showed a significantly higher risk of dementia in NFL players than the general population.  But politics is politics, and that seemingly takes priority over everything else in the world of the Left.

Since Olbermann is dedicating his show tonight to White House talking points on health care, I figured I might as well make it interesting by creating a drinking game for it.

Note: I don’t recommend watching Countdown, there is always something more entertaining and informative on the Watching Paint Dry network, but if your morbid curiosity gets the better of you make sure you have booze handy.

Take a drink every time Keith does one of the following:

• Says “sir” in anger. (Three if it’s a “How dare you, sir!)
• Mentions Sarah Palin (Two if he throws in a pejorative like “failed” or “quitter” first, three if he talks about Trig and the health care he got.)
• Each time he mentions the bogus 44,000 people who die each year for lack of health insurance number.
• Each time he mentions 46, 47 or 50 million uninsured. (Do a shot if he uses the new 30 million number.)
• Praises Canada, France or the UK. (Second sip when he says long lines are a lie.)
• Each time he says “death panel” and Palin.
• Each time he claims Republicans have no plan or solutions. Do a shot when he says Republicans want people to die.
• With every mention of Rush, Hannity, Beck or Levin (aka people with an audience).
• Finish your drink each time he exploits someone’s personal health care horror story and presents it as the norm.
• Chug from the bottle if he mentions the fact that Medicare rejects more claims than any other insurance plan in the country.
• Finish the bottle if he tells the truth about anything, accidentally or on purpose. (I was going to say that you take a drink each time he lies but I don’t want to cause a nationwide wave of alcohol poisoning.)

Feel free to add your own rules in the comments.

Follow these guidelines and you’ll be more drunk than Teddy Kennedy on, well, an average Tuesday in the 70’s. And that might just be enough to tolerate spending an hour watching Keith Olbermann…maybe.

Enjoy!

“Once upon a time, not too many years ago, the Republican Party was the party of ideas. Would even its staunchest supporters say so today? I think not. The sole substance of the Republican Party today is opposition to whatever the Democrats are for, period.”

Were it true, it would be damning.  Thankfully it’s not.

My friend, a former White House high-ranking employee in both the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, grew angry, very angry, about the direction of the Republican Party under President Bush 43, something upon which I agree with him.  But, unlike him, I prefer to stay and fight for what’s right within the party I agree with most, not abandon it. He grew so angry that he voted for Obama in 2008.  Now, I don’t claim to know how any human being works internally, but I don’t understand how someone who claims to be a conservative could make that sort of switch. Simply because your side didn’t live up to their ideals doesn’t mean, to my mind, that  you switch to the side that advocates explicitly the opposite point of view.

But that’s neither here nor there. My friend, and everyone else, is free to vote for whomever they want, for whatever reason they want.  What I take issue with his the common mantra of the Left, echoed by my friend, that Republicans are out of ideas and Democrats are a fountain new ones.

What Democrats are proposing, be it on health care, cap and trade, or any other items on their long “to-do” list, is not new. They’re very old, tired and have been proven wrong.  Do we really need to create “new” arguments against these heavy-handed government intrusions?

Canada, thanks to lawsuits, is moving towards increasing the role of the private sector in health care. (Nothing like an actual ‘public option’ to focus the mind.)  The so-called “green jobs” initiative in Spain has been found to cost 2.2 existing jobs for each job created, a complete failure. If the rest of the world is turning away from these fantasies, what are we doing?

Even as these ideas fail around the world, liberals in Congress and the Obama Administration plow full-speed ahead to force them on us.  There’s a joke about the definition of insanity just sitting there, but I’ll allow you to make it yourself.

On the other hand, there are the über-Leftists like those at the New York Times, and their choir on MSNBC that constantly regurgitates the line that Republicans are bereft of ideas.  You can’t read the intellectually devoid ramblings of Krugman, Dowd or Rich without wondering what planet they live on (then you realize it’s Manhattan and it begins to make a little sense). And you can’t turn on MSNBC without the latest Media Matters/George Soros talking point coming out of the mouths of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz (though looking at Ed you’d suspect his mouth is a one way street and it’s not out).

“Republicans have no solutions,” “They have no plan,” “They are out of ideas,” are standard fare for these “intellectual giants” while interviewing some committed statist with whom they are 100 percent simpatico.  But when your show prep involves what seems to be a T1 line from the Tides Foundation and Moveon.org directly into your teleprompter, intellectual honesty, or even curiosity, simply isn’t in your wheelhouse.

These merchants of dishonesty spread the lie that the George W. Bush years were somehow the glory days of the free market, deregulation and conservative governance.  They were not.

They blame much of the economic problems we face today on the Reagan years, in addition to Bush 43, as if government regulatory bodies didn’t exist in these years, or their power was somehow muffled amid a stead shrinking of government power.  They also forget the many years in which Democrats controlled Congress and the White House. Listening to the unstable folks at MSNBC, you’d think we had runaway, wild-west conservatism since 1980.

The fact of the matter is this: the solutions proposed today by Republicans–the true, free market reforms, have NEVER been tried. FDR’s wage controls forced employers to marry health insurance to employment, as a way to increase compensation when they weren’t allowed, by federal law, to increase wages. As a result, our health insurance market is targeted to employers, leaving the self-employed or individuals with the short straw.

People are not free to buy health insurance across state lines, but large companies are.  Small businesses cannot partner with each other to lower premiums for better health insurance. The federal government prohibits this. The mythical conservative Utopia programmed into the minds of these Chatty Cathy dolls on MSNBC and the Times not only doesn’t exist, it has never existed in the modern age.

So why should conservatives abandon the free market concepts that have proven to work elsewhere in the economy simply because they aren’t “new”? The answer is they shouldn’t.  Correct ideas should not be abandoned simply because they’ve been around a while.  Yes, they do need to articulate them more often, and more clearly, but to say they have no ideas is simply dishonest.

Then again, you’d have better luck Snipe hunting than finding honesty on MSNBC or the opinion pages of the Times.

That’s not to say that health insurance is perfect; some do some shady things and some people get hurt, but just because liberals find the worst case scenario and present them as the norm doesn’t make it so. The vast majority of Americans are satisfied with their health coverage. They aren’t masochists who like being screwed over when the chips are down; they get what they need when they need it.

And that’s not to say Will Ferrell doesn’t deserve the money he makes either, though I’m fairly certain he didn’t return any of the millions he was paid for Bewitched when it became the Ishtar of 2005.

If, as the Funny or Die video seems to imply, someone is to be paid based upon their contributions to society, health insurance executives do deserve to make a lot of money. Certainly they deserve to make more than someone who gets paid $20 million for 1-3 months worth of work, especially when the result of that work is something like Land of the Lost.

But that’s neither here nor there. 

I don’t resent the money anyone makes because I know it’s not a zero-sum game.  Just because someone earns more than I do doesn’t mean I’m making less.

But Ferrell and others from the pampered class felt the need to weigh in on the health care debate, perhaps because, and I’m just speculating here, they thought they could get an NEA grant if they did.  Whatever the reason, they brought as much knowledge and expertise to the table as, well, the table had, before they set anything down on it.

To illustrate this point (seriously, who is going to consult ANYONE in that video on matters of public policy?), I found this video pointing out the absurdity of the FoD piece.

While the MSNBC crowd won’t understand the irony or get the humor of taking policy advice from people who list “Monologs for Student Actors” as one of their favorite books, I hope the rest of you do.

PS – I finally got around to watching the Ed Show on MSNBC the other day and it took me three full segments before I realized Wilbur wasn’t coming because it wasn’t a remake of Mr. Ed.

One possible answer, for you cynics out there (and I may be one), is that he has zero leadership experience and this is simply his way of voting “present” one more time. But that’s too easy and too amateurish for someone so politically savvy.

The only logical answer is he doesn’t want to be pinned down on any specifics.  Sure, he’s talked about what he’d like in a bill, but he’s pretty much disavowed everything he’s said he supports too. He wants a public option one day, but doesn’t need one the next, then explains how it is vital to “real reform.” It literally can’t be both but that hasn’t stopped him from having it both ways.

So at this point, whenever anyone criticizes Obamacare the White House has the perfect defense, “There is no bill.” You can’t win a shadow boxing match, you can’t pick a lock with mashed potatoes, and you can’t pin any unpopular proposals on the President.

This works very well in a campaign because it frustrates your opponent and leaves the public to judge you based mainly on your personality, not your policies.  But it’s about as effective a way to lead a nation as would be hiring Kanye West to be pointman for rehabbing your public image.

In 2003, I spent a lot of time fighting the proposed Medicare prescription drug entitlement because it was simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic without addressing the iceberg ahead.  Back then, President Bush outlined the reforms he wished to see in Medicare in order to incorporate a prescription drug benefit.  Those reforms were good, and crucial to the fiscal health, not only of Medicare but of the country as a whole. But all he did was introduce general principles, not a specific plan; he left the details to Congress.  They ended up slapping a massive unfunded entitlement on top of an even more massive unfunded entitlement, patted themselves on the back for being so compassionate and sat back down in their deck chairs while speeding ever faster into the northern Atlantic.  President Obama is leading us down the same path.

Real leadership risks unpopularity for righteousness.  It was just as bad when President Bush left the wheel for Congressional Republicans to steer as it is for President Obama to hand it to those in his own party.

The American people do not want what Democratic leaders are pushing, but they’ve demonstrated a tin-ear to public opinion, opting for ideology over their duty.  This is where strong leadership can play a role.

No one disputes there is room for reform in our health care system; nothing involving human beings is perfect.  But by refusing to take a true leadership role, President Obama has allowed the extreme partisans to take over, and he leaves us now with talk of ramming a bill through the Senate by utilizing a budgetary trick called “reconciliation.”

With all the claims of a desire for bi-partisanship, the President doesn’t seem very “bi” curious.  Lip-service paid to reform ideas important to conservatives are discarded faster than a wet Kleenex during cold season.  If the President isn’t willing to step-up and lead by including real reform ideas important to the Right, like tort reform and allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines, we’re going to end up with a partisan bill that may or may not pass the House, that will need to be rammed through the Senate and will have to be signed by Obama because he’s put all his chips on double zero and a loss would make him less relevant faster than just about any President in history.

All is not lost; not yet anyway. Since he has been so nebulous about his “plan,” he still has time to cobble together a bill that lowers costs and allows more people to obtain coverage without harming the vast majority of Americans that have coverage.  But there is nothing in his past or his present that would lead anyone to think he has the spine to do it.

Republicans, for their part, shouldn’t be looking to reinvent the wheel here.  Simple reforms, in the form of a simple bill, could be the PR coup they need.  Real, simple reform needs to contain the following:

• Tort reform to make it cheaper to be a doctor will make medical care less expensive;
• the ability to buy plans across state lines will allow victims of a state like New Jersey to escape expensive plans due to excessive mandates;
• the ability of like businesses and individuals through civic organizations to band together to have more buying power, therefore obtain lower premiums;
• changing the tax code to treat the individual market the same as the employer provided one;
• refundable and advanceable tax credits for those that explicitly demonstrate need.

Only one of those reform proposals cost money, and only a little.  While in a perfect world the government would stay out of the health insurance game, we don’t live in a perfect world.  With Presidential leadership these minor tweaks could make a huge difference to all Americans without a massive infringement or take-over of a 1/7 of our economy.  That’s assuming making heath insurance is more widely available and more affordable is the real goal, but that’s a question for another day…

To understand what I’m talking about, the first thing you have to understand it that the Constitution does NOT grant you rights, it protects the rights you inherently have from government intrusion.  The First Amendment in the Bill of Rights is this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  

Just look at the part that addresses speech, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”  Nowhere does it say that you are granted the right of freedom of speech, it says you have it, were born with it, and the government cannot do anything about it.  But that’s not how it’s viewed or even talked about by politicians these days.

By saying that someone has a Constitutional right for free speech implies that it is granted to you and, therefore, can be taken away at some point by amending the Constitution.  While legally this is possibly true, trying to get that amendment passed would have about us much of a chance as getting a safe driver of the year award named after the late Teddy Kennedy.  But the mentality that uses and teaches that erodes, even a little, our basic liberties.

While our Founding Fathers agreed that our basic right to free speech was granted by God, you don’t have to be religious to embrace the idea that we were born with it. In fact, avowed leftist atheists are often the ones wrapping themselves falsely in the First Amendment with the claim that the government protects what they have to say. But it’s not exclusive to leftists, people on the right often cite this mythical right granted them.

So what’s the problem with it?  Who cares if they know the truth as long as the outcome is the same?  It feeds the mentality that is becoming more and more prevalent in society today; that you don’t have natural-born rights, that your rights are granted to you by the government.  This leads to people looking to the government to solve more problems and involve itself in more issues than it was ever intended to, or is Constitutionally allowed to.

Once someone feels indebted to the government for the right to speak their mind, it’s not too great a leap to expect food, shelter and even health care from it, too.  Good things will flow from the government if you believe good things are already flowing from it.  If you do not have a fundamental understanding of where your basic rights come from, and that our government was founded upon those principles, it’s natural that you would look to government for more.

But our government is a limited one, or at least is supposed to be, and was founded to be bound by the Constitution to prevent it from doing most things, not to become most things to anyone. 

Even President Franklin Roosevelt understood the limited powers of the federal government when he proposed his “second Bill of Rights,” a list that included health care, by the way.  While he didn’t propose amending the Constitution to include these “rights,” the mere fact that he had to propose them is acknowledgment that they did not exist in the Constitution.  If they did there would be no reason to propose them, he’d simply have to point them out to a public that had spent more than 150 years missing them in our founding document.

Modern liberals understand this, too, or at least used to.  In 2004, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. proposed amending the Constitution to add a right to health care for all Americans. It when nowhere, but the act of introducing it was passive acknowledgement that it doesn’t exist.

Jackson’s flaw is that of many liberals in this country; not that they want to help people, but that they want to use the power of government to do it.  The Constitution expressly limits what the federal government can do.  It isn’t a rough outline of somewhat good ideas, or even a framework in which government should attempt to exist unless it is found to be too constraining.  It is not a “living document,” it is the shackles placed on what our Founders feared could grow into the type of monster they had just rebelled against.

The Tenth Amendment, often ignored by courts and politicos (what I refer to as the red-headed step-child of the Constitution), plainly states this philosophy:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

If the Constitution does not explicitly give the federal government the power to do something, it doesn’t have it, the states and the people do. The government, as the Constitution stands now, could no more legitimately take away your right to free speech than it could provide you with health insurance or vote to make the sun rise in the west.

So next time you hear someone talk about their “Constitutional right to free speech,” correct them.  While it may seem minor, it is a fundamental piece of their liberty they are ceding to a misunderstanding of our country.  And once one piece goes, it’s a lot easier for others to follow.