Ameritopia_ The Unmaking of America - Mark R. Levin [96]
Meanwhile, like Roosevelt and Johnson, Obama used deception and manipulation in hopes of rallying popular support from the very individuals whose sovereignty he sought to control. During the health-care debate, Obama claimed that “no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: if you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”73 However, McKinsey and Company’s “early-2011 survey of more than 1,300 employers across industries, geographies, and employer sizes, as well as other proprietary research, found that … 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering [health care] in the years after 2014,” once the PPACA has been fully implemented.74
Obama insisted that “the underlying argument … has to be addressed, and that is people’s concern that if we are reforming the health care system to make it more efficient, which I think we have to do, the concern is that somehow that will mean rationing of care, right? That somehow some government bureaucrat out there saying, well, you can’t have this test or you can’t have this procedure because some bean-counter decides that is not a good way to use health care dollars.…”75 He went on, “So, I just want to be very clear about this.… You will have not only the care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you [by insurance companies]—only if we get health care reform.”76 But Professor Martin Feldstein pointed out at the time that “[a]lthough administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central … to Obama’s health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive. The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama administration’s goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the next two decades. That reduction would be achieved by eliminating ‘high cost, low-value treatments,’ by ‘implementing a set of performance measures that all providers would adopt,’ and by ‘directly targeting individual providers … (and other) high-end outliers.’”77
Obama argued that health-care reform “will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.” He declared, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficit, now or in the future, period.” However, Hewitt Associates and Mercer both reported that the PPACA was contributing to premium hikes;78 the Congressional Budget Office disclosed that it will cost 800,000 jobs;79 it reported further that the program will likely cost $115 billion more than originally estimated;80 and the secretary of Health and Human Services admitted that $500 billion in supposed savings resulted from double-counting funds cut from the Medicare program.81
Plato, in the Republic, would have approved of Obama’s mendacity, as he would have approved of Roosevelt’s and Johnson’s earlier. “The noble lie,” as Plato called it, conditioned citizens to surrender their personal desires and happiness to the needs of the City and the common good. He wrote that it also promotes patriotism and eliminates political factionalism (415d). Of course, there is nothing noble about it. Obama knew full well that his pronouncements were distortions. Former Harvard University professor Donald Berwick explained in 2008 that “[a]ny health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributionist.”82 Obama demonstrated his agreement with Berwick’s sentiment when, in 2010, he appointed Berwick to oversee the federal government’s massive Medicare and Medicaid programs. As Obama said in 2008, “When you