PERSPECTIVE: Sign here for higher insurance premiums
Published: October 16, 2009
» The left touts the Baucus bill as helping the middle class. In reality, that’s the group that will cover its $400 billion in new taxes and fees.
Fourth-graders are not progressing in their capacity to perform rudimentary arithmetic, mirroring a malady that long has afflicted Democrats. The results for schoolkids came in Wednesday from federally funded achievement tests, and for Democrats a day earlier with the passage of a Senate Finance Committee health care bill to the sound of triumphant cries among the vacuous left.
President Barack Obama has trumpeted reform as needed for the sake of the middle class, a group leftists adore and pursue in the fashion of the beautiful but deranged Alex Forrest stalking her married paramour in “Fatal Attraction.” It works like this: “I love you. Now I must kill you.”
This time, Obama played the role of seducer, going prime-time to sell health care reform as a means to relieve the middle class of the burden of exorbitant cost. The legislation passed Tuesday bearing the imprimatur of Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and the approval of Obama is the killer, a form of Glenn Close rising from the bathtub clutching a knife aimed at the chest of the cherished middle class.
A study commissioned by the insurance industry says the Baucus bill — a Baucus feast of bad ideas — would cost families an average of $4,000 more annually for health insurance within 10 years.
Democrats demonize the insurance industry, but what about the Congressional Budget Office? Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin writes in the Wall Street Journal that “the bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90% of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less.”
Not to worry, the left sniffs. Under the bill, the feds would subsidize coverage for families whose incomes stretch to up to 400 percent of the poverty level, or $88,200 for a family of four. Except that people who get insurance through their employers get no subsidies.
Oops. The dear old CBO says only 17 million people would get the federal help. As for most of the rest of the country? Sign here for higher premiums. Isn’t reform great?
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Reader Reactions
Whether left or right, and whether you wish to view President Obama as Glenn Close or Charlotte Corday attacking a tyrannical dictator which is the personification of an out of control for-profit insurance bureaucracy, we’ve already signed up for higher premiums. If nothing changes, do you believe premiums will stay level? Look at the last 10 years. Who thinks they can frighten us with the spectre of higher premiums? We already deal with that every year.
I’m happy to engage any serious discussion on health care or most any other issue. But note the word “serious”. If someone wants to traffic in such nonsensical analogies, their comments don’t deserve a serious reply.
I don’t “hate” President Obama, neither do I completely know what he’s up to with this broad-brush health care issue that seems to generate such passion. I do know that you didn’t actually address any of the actual facts put forth in the borrowed editorial - you just jumped on the silly analogy to “Fatal Attraction.“ For a guy so committed to the “Left” you sure do need to be “Right” all the time!
No, I can’t refute the analogy of President Obama wanting health care for all and “I love you. Now I must kill you”. After all, what can you say to stuff like that?.....other than “sigh”. But I’m sure if you hate President Obama it will make perfect sense.
rjma, what are you arguing about now? The meaning and capitalizaiton of “left” and “right”? Who writes the editorials for a newspaper? The poor analogy of Obama as Glen Close? Or are you just mad because you can’t refute what the editorial has to say?
BTW, I’ve seen the Richmond Times-Dispatch preint other papers’ editorials. The writer is never identified - that’s how newspaper editorials work.
BV- I’ll agree that the term “the Left” which is different from being “leftist” or “left-wing” does not have a universally agreed upon capitalization style, not unlike “Northern Virginia”. I’ve seen it spelled plenty of times with a cap, but upon further review not always. I think of it as a proper noun that is always capitalized. If you’d like we can go into the origin of left/right which goes back to the establishment figures allied with the King that always sat on his right. The more common people sat on his left. But now that is getting too serious and I know that bothers you.
But the editorials are still essentially anonymous in my view. Yes, I know it has become traditional, but no one is to know whether the piece is written by the editor, some other editorial board member- the identity of which is not so readily available to a casual reader, or even a publisher. How’s a person to know?
Actually it is very unusual isn’t it for a newspaper to print some other newspapers editorials? Could you cite an example?
And I especially appreciate the attack “You take yourself too seriously”, which I simply take as an admission that you don’t have much to refute what I say so you resort to personal attacks.
Can I take it that you are fine with equating Pres. Obama trying to pass health care reform and a knife-wielding femme fatale.?
Mr. Legge, a few points:
1. The letter was written by the editorial board of the Waynesboro paper. That is very clear from the CSE practice of titling such works as “Perspective.“
2. The most recent AP Stylebook I could find was from 2005; it does not call for such use of the word “left” to be capitalized. Today’s WaPo has several such uses of the words “left” and “right,“ and they are not capitalized.
3. You take yourself too seriously.
Another anonymous writer who doesn’t even know that the “Left” should be capitalized.
But really why even bother to engage some polemic who equates President Obama trying to help people that are able to access health care with some movie figure rising out of the bathtub with a knife set to kill.
How can you take someone like that seriously? Why is this stuff even printed in a newspaper?
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