Tuesday, October 23, 2012

1st Unofficial P.M. of the Pres. O Years

I thought I might as well be one of the first to do a postmortem of the Obama presidency.
What a sad waste of talent and opportunity. If President Obama could have stepped outside his
particular political viewpoint and seen America as others do...wow.
But ifs can't buy you candy.
President Obama failed America because he thought that it needed to be improved by HIS ideas.
This land is a melting pot of ideas, because it was instituted on the idea that each man and woman in our country has the freedom to think for his or her self.
Of course we disagree about EVERYTHING! Thank God and our founding Fathers for the right to disagree!
I think President Obama could have had a great Presidency and easily won re-election if he had simply
accepted that other political points of view were just as valid as his; if he had 'reached across the aisle'
to work with those with whom he disagreed, he could have been a Leader.
Instead, everyone who disagreed with him was wrong, was evil, hated the poor, had no compassion, etc.
In the last year, even the Democrats in Congress seemed to have had enough of President Obama.
With that said, I have no illusions about Romney being the next Ronald Reagan-if he's moderate and doesn't give away the store, I'll be happy. 
I expect President Obama to lose the election, which is becoming the consensus view. I won't be cheering and laughing; much damage has been done to our country, and it will take a lot of hard work and sacrifice just to get back to where we were before President Obama took office.
Dismantling the medical fiasco he and Congress created will be a very necessary first step. I was talking to a hospital administrator recently about the coming Obamacare constrictions on healthcare and he admitted that it is frightening.
Specifically we were talking about the penalty if too many (how many?) patients who have been released from a hospital suffer a relapse and need further treatment. Under Obamacare, the hospital can be penalized beaucoup bucks.
That's just one example, but this post isn't about healthcare.
President Obama wasted four years and trillions of dollars trying to re-make America in his image.
You may hate President Bush, but you can't accuse him of doing that.
President Obama-I wish him good health, and continue to pray that he will become a real Christian.
And may he enjoy his retirement starting in January 2013.


8 comments:

Doug said...

If you need evidence as to the existence of God, we did not have a President Kerry, nor a Gore.
Can you imagine the shambles if Kerry had won and then had to fire vice president Edwards when the adultery/paternity thing came out?
I really thought that President Obama was going to drop Biden in favor of Hilclinton to have a better shot at re-election. Her Sec/State gig would have added to her viability as a running mate-but perhaps Biden remaining on the ticket is one more evidence that God is in charge (and that He has a sense of humor).

Lucia said...

Because health insurance pays for only a certain time in the hospital to treat a given condition, and because medical bills for uninsured treatment are less likely to be paid promptly or at all, hospitals have an incentive to discharge patients when that time is up, whether or not it makes medical sense. The catch is that that time isn't always enough, and when it's not, additional treatment can end up being more expensive than if the patient hadn't been booted out too soon in the first place. So the penalty for too many premature discharges (of which I hadn't heard before) would act as a counterincentive and could end up saving the hospital and the patient money in the long run.

(This calculation is quite apart from the fact that people who don't get adequate medical treatment tend to have worse medical outcomes than people who do.)

I have seen no evidence that Romney is a moderate or would be allowed to govern as one. He's been very clever in the debates about appearing to be more moderate than he did in the primaries so as not to scare independents (shake that Etch-a-Sketch, baby!) without actually making any substantive policy changes. For example, he says he'd preserve coverage for preexisting conditions for people with continuous coverage, which already exists under current law.

By the way, do you know where Obamacare came from originally?

Doug said...

Hi Lu-Obamacare is the lib wish list which the Clintons tried to put in place in the 1990's, derisively called "Hillarycare" by those of my political stripe, but the actual ideas behind it are decades old. It's all part of the 'cradle to the grave' control of peoples lives which didn't do so hot in Russia; our Libs aren't deterred by the fact that it has never worked anywhere-you can call them optimists if you like.
The reason for my discussion with the hospital admin: I had just seen a news story on the subject while exercising, so I wanted to hear his opinion of hospitals being penalized for patients who relapse in too great a number.
What a mess this would be!
Patient "A" is a diabetic overweight smoker who is also an alcoholic. He relapses after being released by the hospital and returning to the bad habits that got him in trouble.
Should the hospital be penalized because he goes back to drinking and eating stuff that will kill him?
That's a WCS, but WHO decides how liable a hospital can be for the bad health decisions of the people who's lives they save?
I'm doing what I can now to avoid bad health problems in my elder years.
I can only answer for me, but if I were a diabetic who was overweight, smoking and drinking to excess...if I got toted into an emergency room and then was brought back to good health, I wouldn't blame the hospital if my bad habits did me in again. I'd blame me.
As for Romney, Lu-you and I might have differing descriptions of what 'moderate' means (shock, right?).
But we're all in the same boat, us Americans, and we will survive and live our lives no matter who is screwing up the country form Washington D.C.
Have a good night.

Anonymous said...

HEY EVERYBODY. GOD BLESS YOU . BUT I LOVE YOU CHRISTIANS MORE.

Lucia said...

Obamacare originally came from the American Enterprise Institute, as a conservative alternative to Medicare for all (which I would still like to see, but I will be shocked if it happens in this country in my lifetime).

Here is a cogent explanation by a well-known politician of the problem with letting uninsured people just go to an emergency room for health care, and how universal care can improve on that without costing more:

Under federal law, hospitals had to stabilize and treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions.... That meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn't have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured buy insurance instead and obtain treatment in the way that the vast majority of individuals did — before acute conditions developed — the cost of insuring everyone... might not be as expensive as I had feared.

I love your automatic assumption that if someone relapses after being released from the hospital, it must be due to his own bad choices. If only people would take responsibility for their lives! But the reality, as you perfectly well know, is that complications can arise from what put someone in the hospital in the first place or from treatment of that condition. An incentive for the hospital to keep an eye peeled for signs of complications is not such a bad thing.

Doug said...

"But the reality, as you perfectly well know, is that complications can arise from what put someone in the hospital in the first place or from treatment of that condition."
And Lu, as you know, hospitals can 'keep an eye peeled for complications' 24/7 and not change the outcome-people will still relapse, as we are caught in entropy.
One young lady I know has a messed up knee. Surgery and rehab will make that knee stronger than ever, and she will not relapse.
But overweight/diabetic/smokers/alcoholics/aged with brittle bones/bad lungs-bodies constantly relapse and WILL relapse no matter what the hospital does to get them back on their feet.
As for healthcare for everybody mandated by the government---that's crazy talk. The government shouldn't be in the healthcare business.
For years I went without medical insurance but you know what? As I got older I had incentive to find and keep jobs which make health insurance a a part of the employment package.
That incentive was good.
It isn't being 'compassionate' to demand that taxpayer provide free healthcare to everyone whether they earn a living or are jobless.
You do the poor no favors by taking away their incentive to work
and earn their own money.
We've had a Democrat President for nearly four years now, and his administration has harmed the country by putting millions of Americans out of work while funding "green jobs boondoggles" which help no one.
President Obama's rejection of oil drilling on and off shore, the threat to the coal industry that they will be shut down, even the rejection of the Keystone pipeline from Canada-all of these Admin decision s have harmed America and made more people poor.
Look at the "Keep young people on their parent's insurance until they are 26." idea-sounds good, right?
It's good for the young people, but that means that that much more expense is loaded onto the parents budget, all in the name of 'compassion'. And Junior doesn't learn how to budget/make his own way in the world until age 27.
That's not compassion. That's young adult abuse. Especially since Mom and Dad might be struggling in this poor economy, and with their more adult view see "Taxageddon" waiting for them January 2013 compliments of the Obama Administration and Congress.


Lucia said...

A major deterrent to starting a small business is the cost of individual health insurance. This is even more true if the would-be entrepreneur has medical issues and/or young children.

Doug said...

"A major deterrent to starting a small business is the cost of individual health insurance. This is even more true if the would-be entrepreneur has medical issues and/or young children."
Obamacare won't fix that-instead it makes the economy worse for ALL taxpayers by adding to our tax burden.
If you remember back a few years to when the Obamacare debacle was being hashed out, Paul Ryan showed in a televised hearing that the double-counting of 'savings' and the undercounting of 'costs' were were illicit accounting practices.
Ryan stated that to President Obama's face in that hearing; Obama got angry and then 'answered' Ryan by droning on for 20 minutes with obfuscating jibber-jabber.
It's a mess and Obamacare was so hated by the populace that some career Democrats who's seats had been safe for decades were defeated in the 2010 election or decided to retire because their chances of winning were dim.
Democrats held both the House and the Senate when Obamacare passed, and yet it was bitterly contested
even among Democrats.
In the end, unless Obamacare is repealed by the next Congress and President, we will be hurting even more when it is completely implemented. That young couple looking to start a business won't have a chance. Thanks to Obamacare.