Obamacare passed the House. My prediction is that the two biggest effects of this are the quality of health care will go down, and the price will go up. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear I am right.
Dr. Dan Benishek is running for Congress against Bart Stupak who voted for Obamacare. Why not donate to his campaign?
Thanks to Instapundit for the link.
Update: Evidently it hasn’t passed yet, but Stupak has caved, which probably means it has the votes to pass.
I oppose President Obama’s health care plan because I think it’s going to mean lower quality care at higher prices. I realize that poor people need health care, and I am not Ebeneezer Scrooge. I don’t think health care is a right. I believe as an American and a Christian we have an obligation to help less fortunate Americans.
Regardless of whether Obamacare passes or not, I am going to blog more and become more politically active. We have to act now. If we do not act now, the Democratic Party and their friends in organized labor are going to spend this country into bankruptcy. The time to stop them is now.
There is one and only one issue that will drive how I vote this election season. That issue is Fiscal Responsibility.
Here is how I define Fiscal Responsibility:
Any questions?
Instapundit linked to a Yahoo News article that is a summary of Rasmussen polling data.
Here is a much briefer summary:
In other words the respondents to this poll believe that by a three to one margin this plain will fail to achieve its stated intention of reducing health care costs. Also the respondents to this poll believe that by a 2 to 1 margin that this bill will make the quality of health care go down.
“The America Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”—Alexis de Tocqueville
Dr. Helen links to one of those annoying stories about a wife going on Suze Orman’s talk show to trash her husband, because he makes 25% less money per year than she does. He makes $90,000 per year (which is more than Mrs. RW and I make combined) and is in his forties and wants to go to law school. So this guy Joe declined to appear on the talk show. I’d say Joe is a very wise man. Anyone who can’t figure out that from a strictly financial perspective its better to be part of a $210,000 per year couple than to live alone on $120,000 per year doesn’t understand money very well. If there’s one thing worse than having your wife insult you on cable TV, it’s having to sit there and take it. I have a friend whose salary is three times his wife’s salary, and if he complained about the disparity to me, I’d suggest his priorities were all wrong.
If I ever find an issue to criticize my better half about, you won’t be reading about it here. I won’t be talking about it on some talk show. I would never speak it louder than a whisper, and no one but her would ever hear it.
I personally am opposed to divorce, but if I were in the situation Joe finds himself in, I’d be thinking of hiring a divorce lawyer, so that I could find a younger, more attractive gold digger who is happy having a husband who makes $90,000 per year.
Dr. Helen linked to John Hawkins’ new site Self Help Quotes where I found this gem:
“Democrats couldn’t care less if people in Indiana hate them. But if Europeans curl their lips, liberals can’t look at themselves in the mirror.”—Ann Coulter
The whole site is full of great quotes, and is well worth the read. This one just happened to jump out at me since I’m from Indiana and …
My wife and I got together with some of our friends, and so the women went off shopping for clothes. I went out shopping at a couple of bookstores and other places. One bookstore was having a store closing sale, and was mobbed by people because everything was 50% off. The book selection had already been picked over fairly well so I didn’t buy anything. Then we walked around the mall for a bit and wound up at the other bookstore, where I found a couple of things to buy. So I wound up standing in line for ten minutes so that I could pay for the items I found.
Halfway through the line, I thought to myself that I should have just ordered the stuff from Amazon. So next time I will.
At the first of the year, I got on the scale and realized my weight was now almost 250 pounds. Ten years ago I probably weighed 80 pounds less. I realized it was time to make a change. My health isn’t that bad now, but I don’t want to gain another eighty pounds, that’s for sure. So I started on the South Beach Diet and have lost 16 pounds in the last five weeks. This is but a small step in losing some of the weight I’ve gained, but is is a small step in the right direction.
The reason I mention this is there are things we can all do to influence our health. One of my big objections to our goverment being more involved in the health care is that I think that it will discourage people from taking responsibility for their own health. If I stick with the diet, I think my health will continue to improve. My wife and I are now spending more on groceries to do the diet. If the diet leads to better health, and lower medical bills though, I’m all for that.
Something gnawed at me about the President’s proposal to use $30 billion of the TARP funds that have been repaid to lend to community banks so that they can lend it to small businesses in their community, and those small businesses can keep their doors open. While I oppose the idea in general, because banks should already be able to borrow money from the Federal Reserve to lend if they are so inclined. That was not what was grating on my nerves, however. I just realized what struck me as wrong. Small businesses shouldn’t be borrowing money to keep their doors open. Small businesses should be borrowing money so that they can engage in profitable business activity. Loaning money to a small business so that it can keep it’s doors open sounds like putting good money after bad.
I want to be an optimist and believe that sooner or later the economy will pick up. I’m a realist, and think that it’s probably going to be later at best given our reluctance to face the problems which caused the economy to be bad in the first place. I’ve worked for several businesses in my career, some big and some small, so I know a thing or two about business that those who haven’t worked outside the public sector don’t know. Every business either makes a profit or a loss. Working for a profitable business, large or small is far from perfect. However, it beats working for an unprofitable business hands down. I am currently happily employed by a small business, and hope they are a profitable enterprise. Not only that, I hope their sales and profits both continue to grow. I don’t know the financial details, but I hope my boss is richer than I am. I once had a boss who was poorer than I was and that was a rather unpleasant experience to say the least.
If my employer is not profitable, I have no job security. If my employer isn’t profitable, how can they give me a pay raise? A loan will just postpone the inevitable.