Back in 1994, when I supported a single payer health plan, the Clintons infuriated me by creating a reform plan so Byzantine in its chains of power and newly minted bureaucracies, that it became incomprehensible. As a result, health reform failed. And it was so unnecessary, given that the much simpler Medicare structure was already in place.
Fast forward to the present. I now oppose single payer because I think it leads to rationing and breaks the bank. And once again, our elected leaders have used the cause of needed health care reform as an excuse to engage in stultifying bureaucracy building–instead of fixing the parts of our health care system that are broken without destroying the parts that work. Alas, this time, it didn’t fail. Indeed, Obamacare has created so many new bureaucracies that even the Congressional Research Service can’t count them all. From the story:
Don’t bother trying to count up the number of agencies, boards and commissions created under the new health care law. Estimating the number is “impossible,” a recent Congressional Research Service report says, and a true count “unknowable.” The reasons for the uncertainty are many, according to CRS’s Curtis W. Copeland, the author of the report “New Entities Created Pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” The provisions of the law that create the new entities vary dramatically in specificity. The law says a lot about some of them and a little about many, and merely mentions a few. Some have been authorized without any instructions on who is to appoint whom, when that might happen and who will pay. Those agencies created without specific appointment or appropriations procedures will have to wait indefinitely for staff and funding before they can function, according to Copeland’s report. And others could be just the opposite: One entity might not be enough and could spawn others, resulting in an “indeterminate number of new organizations.”
Obamacare will tie this country’s health care system up in Gordian knots. Or, perhaps more vividly stated, wrap us like a fly in a spider’s web. Doctors, hospitals, and health insurers can’t be effective when they have to answer to so many overlords. What a disaster. Repeal. Revise. Reform. Defund.
August 3rd, 2010 | 11:46 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stand In The Gap, Wesley J. Smith. Wesley J. Smith said: Obamacare: Smothering Us On Bureaucracy » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog http://shar.es/01j6k [...]
August 3rd, 2010 | 4:32 pm
I couldn’t agree more. Not really much else to say, except, Obama has wasted his presidency. He COULD have been the one to do some ACTUAL good for this country. Instead, he’ll go down in history as another agent for corporate greed. What a waste of human flesh.
August 3rd, 2010 | 8:52 pm
“waste of human flesh”
Obama isn’t human flesh.
Behind the beer-guzzling, chain smoking, hoopster facade, we have no idea where he was born, what his race is, who his friends are, who his true parents are, where Marian Robinson is really living, his relation to Abo and Bernard, who his cousin Billy really was, what his religion is, who funds him, how close to ACORN he really is, or what his true political affiliation is (Marxist, Imperialist, Socialist, Communist ??).
Only the antichrist or a demigod could fit such a maculate description as that of the Barack Hussein Obama.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 4th, 2010 at 12:12 am
For anyone who doesn’t know David, that’s pure sarcasm. Response not required or warranted. Stick to Obamacare please, not the person of the president, whether a supporter or opponent. Thank you.
August 4th, 2010 | 1:22 pm
Obamacare will become to unwieldy to fund let alone refund Wesley. Death panels and long waits for medical procedures are your new path no matter how much wool Pelosie/Reid & Obama pull over your eyes. I am awaiting hip surgery up here in Canada. I was told in February that I would be a year to a year & a half, before getting said surgery. Two weeks ago I was advised that date has been pushed out to two years so the net result will be 2.5 years if they don’t push the date back even more. I know a friend that was on pins & needles for 7 months waiting for test results over prostrate problems. It is good that they were so anxious to help him out because the results were positive for cancer. By the time they got around to operating on him his chances are pretty slim to be a cancer survivor. Ditto Breast Cancer tests. Makes me shiver to see how long women are waiting for test results.
August 4th, 2010 | 3:50 pm
Also from the story:
“Implicit in the report is a message not to take too seriously the elaborate charts and seemingly precise numbers peddled by Republican critics that are designed to show the law’s many bureaucratic tentacles.”
In case you hadn’t seen it, here’s one of those “elaborate charts” we’re not supposed to take too seriously.
I don’t know which is worse, looking at that chart or having the Congressional Research Service say it’s impossible to tell whether it might even be more complicated.
August 4th, 2010 | 8:06 pm
Do you really think that Clinton health care reform failed because it was byzantine?
Has does someone who used to collaborate with Ralph Nader, and who used to support single payer health care become a strident radical conservative? I’ve found 5 events that trigger such a change, new religion, new job, Clinton getting oral sex, 9/11 or Obama election.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
August 4th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Moving to San Francisco. And yes, I thought so at the time. I was screaming to just extend Medicare.
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