Fear, Anger and Loathing Over Obamacare

Town hall meetings are supposed to be polite, but that's not how they're often conducted. Even before the health care debate, how many times did news of fisticuffs and other harshness occur at town hall meetings that ended up on YouTube and local news? Quite a bit.

These gatherings are often over emotionally rough issues that bring out the passions on both sides. I've seen loud gatherings in my local homeowners association over much less serious matters than national health care policy.

It's not like I concur with the mob mentality that has broken out at health care town hall meetings in Tampa and St. Louis, but it hasn't sprung up out of whole cloth. It happens all the time, but now that health care is a hot button issue, people are taking their elected representatives to task and these actions get wide attention. Many people who haven't been outspoken on matters are realizing that they need to speak out and may not realize that screaming and getting into the face of others who disagree is the wrong way to handle these occasions. I don't think the mob mentality is the right way to handle it, but that's what they're doing.

The mob mentality is going to undercut the GOP effectiveness on this issue, but the anger is real. The displeasure with a Democrat party that is going to ram through massive changes to health care policy is real.

Everyone realizes that Congress isn't even bothering to read the details, and that the Members are going along with what the party leaders say are in the bill (and one can wonder whether even they know the entirety of what's in the bills).

None of the proponents can honestly answer basic questions about these bills, namely:

1) How much will this realistically cost, given that every other government program has gone staggeringly over cost projections.
2) How long will I have under my existing program until the government health care forces me into the public plan.
3) Why should public health care improve quality when we've got examples from other countries where care becomes far more restrictive and quality of care is substandard in US gov't health care programs like the Indian Health Service and the VA.
4) Cash for clunkers anyone? If you can't manage a $1 (now $3) billion program adequately, how can anyone expect the government to do a better job with a significant portion of the US GNP.

That's how it should be handled. The SEIU, which may have precipitated one of the outbreaks of violence at the St. Louis town hall meeting, says that the violence should stop. That's a good start.

The violence and shennanigans go both ways. Anti-health care protesters have suggested violence, but the left has not exactly engaged in honest debate at these town halls and debates either.

Those who are pushing for mob mentality should be avoided; they are doing nothing to prevent Obamacare from coming to fruition, but they are going to provide ammunition to the Left that it's a group of wackos and nutjobs who oppose Obama's health care policies.

The Democrats continue to provide plenty of ammunition without resorting to fisticuffs that the health care plans should be killed. Take for example the situation with the drug industry over costs for medications.

Pressed by drug industry lobbyists, a White House deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed in an e-mail message on Wednesday that the White House shared the drug lobbyists’ interpretation of the deal: that any health care overhaul would not include allowing direct government negotiation of drug prices or require certain additional price rebates. Since Wednesday, other representatives of the White House had also stood by Mr. Messina’s statement as well.

After reading reports about Mr. Messina’s e-mail message, House and Senate Democrats loudly protested that they would not be bound by any such agreement to remove clauses allowing government negotiation of drug prices under Medicare — something Democrats have sought for years.

Several Senate Democrats said Friday that, in a private meeting, White House officials had told them there was no such deal, sowing yet more confusion. House Democratic leaders vowed to fight against it.

Then, after contending for two days that the Senate Democrats had misunderstood the White House aide’s comments, the White House appeared Friday night to back away.

In a telephone interview, Linda Douglass, a White House spokeswoman on health matters, said the question of government drug-price bargaining “was not discussed during the negotiations.” Asked if that meant such a provision was excluded, as the top drug lobbyists had previously said, Ms. Douglass declined to comment, repeating, “It was not discussed.”

The Administration can't even get its story straight with the drug industry, so how can anyone take whatever else they say seriously?

Drug companies in the US produce quite a bit more medications than elsewhere in the world, and attempting to force cost controls onto those companies may reduce their ability to recoup the research and development costs that go into finding new medications and new uses for medications.