Charlie Kraut: Muddling Health Reform Debate, the Neocon Way

By Nicholas Stix

Charles Krauthammer’s November 30 column on health care reform is a model of judiciousness and clarity—if you don’t look too closely. Krauthammer is reportedly a man of astronomical intelligence, which would serve him well, were he an astronomer. Unfortunately, he writes about politics, which is not rocket science, and where intellectual courage is more important than a genius IQ, because the problems aren’t amenable to genius, but do require grit, in stating them fully. And if there’s one thing that being a neocon today precludes, it is having grit. Neoconservatism operates from the premise that today’s MSM—socialist-communist or Republican-libertarian—will only permit tiny percentages of truth at a time. And so, Krauthammer and his colleagues leaven their little truths with huge shovelfuls of Barbra Streisand.

In his column, Krauthammer argues that “Obama’s” health insurance reform is the wrong way to go, and offers an alternative of three types of reform, none of which is being countenanced by the Democrats: Tort reform; interstate health insurance sales, in order to increase competition, consumer choice, and reduce prices; and permitting the federal government to tax employee insurance benefits.

Charlie Kraut says, “The better choice is targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system… and provide the funds to cover the uninsured without wrecking both U.S. health care and the U.S. Treasury,” but nothing is going to “provide the funds” for over 45 million people. The money isn’t there. Besides, that’s not insuring the uninsured, it’s an additional welfare program. The only way the uninsured can become insured is if they purchase insurance, not if the government confiscates ever more money from the shrinking white middle and upper-middle classes, and spends it on poor blacks and Hispanics, including aliens.

(In theory, it would cover poor whites as well, but don’t count on it. Have you ever visited an agency that is supposed to serve “the poor,” but which has been taken over by racist blacks or Hispanics? Heck, back when my black and Hispanic health insurer-union had its own dental clinic for paying members only, I once had a racist Filipino dentist lie to me about my x-rays, and tell me that there was nothing wrong with my teeth, when I needed a root canal! I went to the front desk and demanded a different dentist, and fortunately found a very nice, competent white dentist, who was not surprised when I told her about the racist Filipino.)

Kraut’s ideas about tort reform and interstate health insurance sales are potentially good ways to save money, but not as means to fund yet another government boondoggle. If the savings don’t go into the consumer’s pockets, why should consumers support them? And as for taxing insurance benefits as a form of income, while it sounds good in isolation from the big picture, I don’t want the government coming up with more ingenious ways to tax the American people to death, even if it weren’t in order to transfer income from hard-working, overtaxed whites to lazy, racist, irredentist blacks and Hispanics.

Thus, my vote is for no “reform.” The whole point of this undertaking, like others by the John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama,” is to nationalize an industry (he’s already started with autos and finance, and energy and newspapers are on the way, too), and thereby extend his power. The “public option” is just a Trojan horse, with which to destroy the private insurance industry.

As for Kraut’s “moral imperative” to insure the uninsured, there is no such moral imperative, and that is not what “Obama” seeks to do, anyway. He seeks, through health care, education, and housing boondoggles, to suck every last penny of assets from the white middle and upper-middle classes. And that’s only the beginning. (He’ll leave much of the white rich alone, at first, since they are busy bribing him, thinking that that will save them, while he destroys all whites below them.)

Who are these “uninsured,” whom he plans to “force” to pay insurance? One-third to one-half are illegal Hispanic aliens. Millions more are legal aliens. Much of the rest are blacks. These people have never paid for health care (they just walk into emergency rooms, get treated, and ignore the bill, if they are even sent one), and have no intention of starting now. Critics have pointed out that it is unconstitutional to force anyone to pay for health insurance, but “Obama” never intended to force blacks and Hispanics to pay for anything.

I am reminded here of Chuck Schumer’s dodge a few years ago. He said that we should give illegal aliens driver’s licenses, because then they will be insured. Like so much that comes out of Schumer’s mouth, his proposal was a non-sequitur: How would giving an illegal human being a driver’s license cause him to buy auto insurance? (Schumer had not proposed a requirement that a driver prove that he had already paid for insurance, before being issued a license.)

Kraut’s method here is all too familiar to watchers of neocons: Instead of simply saying “no” to vicious state power grabs, he comes up with a more clever form of state power grab than the socialists/communists themselves. He’s sort of like the Bush brothers. Leftists and racists who supported affirmative action had been coming before the U.S. Supreme Court and losing one case after another. All appeared to be lost, until George and Jeb Bush came up with affirmative action schemes which were every bit as racist as the their erstwhile opponents’ plans, but with the racially neutral fig leaf of specifying that a certain top percentage of graduating students from every high school would be guaranteed admission to the flagship state university campuses in Texas and Florida, respectively.

The Bush plans were racist affirmative action plans because, as the brothers well knew, a student in the top five percent at a lousy black or Hispanic high school would be lucky to make the top fifty percent at a top white or Asian school. Thus, the Bush brothers deliberately racially discriminated against top white and Asian students, large numbers of whom were frozen out of their state flagship universities, and on behalf of incompetent black and Hispanic students, who were admitted to those schools in the competent students’ stead. And still, it got the Bushes nowhere with blacks, who hated them with undiminished vigor. That’s the neocon/Republican way!

As for “Obama’s” intentions, consider this general precedent: Once in 2007 or 2008, when asked about reparations, he said that “reparations” as conceived was unacceptable to him, as it would only be a one-time deal, and thus wouldn’t go far enough, i.e., would let whites off too easily. He wanted something that would entail continuous, increased education payments by whites. (Never mind that whites never owed reparations in the first place, but have nevertheless had their pockets picked to the tune of $5 trillion-$10 trillion in reparations, already.)

We know from the past generation that more education spending does not equal better cognitive outcomes, and we know from “Obama’s” history with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that he and his terrorist comrade, Bill Ayers, spread $159 million around to their incompetent cronies, refused to fund people with positive ideas, and that their idea of ed reform is to have kids taught communist/racial socialist slogans. The money resulted in no cognitive gains.

We need less education funding, not more. Heck, we need less government funding, in general.

A tip ‘o the hat to my Oak Park journalist-blogger friend Jim Bowman.