Obama's Forfeited Credibility Sabotaging Obamacare

President Barack Obama apparently came to believe the myth of his messiahship and has accordingly abused and squandered his good will and political capital and possibly self-sabotaged his socialized medicine scheme.

Of all the newsworthy aspects of this desperate "reform" effort, none is more so than the robust democratic processes it has reinvigorated in this nation. While Democrats insist the nationwide grass-roots movement against his Draconian measure is contrived and illusory, it is just the opposite.

Nothing could be so real as the American people, emboldened by their passion for liberty, standing up against a callous, dishonest government trolling for its freedoms in exchange for false promises.

All the proof we need that Obama and Democrats recognize the authenticity of this grass-roots protest is their hysterical reaction to it. They wouldn't be hyperventilating about it if they believed it to be fake, but would use their supermajorities to ram through this bill.

Indeed, that congressmen have not been able or courageous enough (against the threat of being removed from office in 2010) to pass this bill is the story of the year. Integral to that story is the unraveling of the Obama mystique, occasioned by Obama's ongoing arrogance and duplicity, most recently on the Obamacare issue.

Let's just look at some of the myriad ways Obama has betrayed the enormous trust bestowed upon him — on the health care issue alone.

Obama has said he just wants a dialogue with the American people on health care. Sorry, but there are just so many times a person can say the exact opposite of what he means and retain a shred of credibility. While saying he wants this dialogue, he's also telling his opponents to shut up — literally. Even more revealing, he was adamant that this bill be passed before the August recess — a bill whose provisions he admitted or pretended he was not familiar with. How could there have been a dialogue if he had already made up his mind and if the deadline he had artificially imposed could not possibly have allowed a dialogue?

Obama has said his opponents were trying to "scare and mislead the American people," when in fact his opponents are the American people whom he is trying to scare and mislead.

Obama misleads us concerning the public option, saying people can keep their private plans if they prefer. Yet the House bill, which he was urging be passed before the August recess, effectively would coerce employers, through punitive and positive incentives, to dump their private plans in favor of the public option.

Obama misleads us in his inartful attempt to analogize the postal industry with his health plan, saying privately run FedEx and UPS have fared well against the government-run Postal Service. He fails to tell us how different the public/private competitive environment would be under his health care plan with the deck stacked — by law — against the survival of private insurers and private care.

Obama misleads us by denying that bureaucrats would "meddle" in our health care decisions or with the doctor-patient relationship. Yet in almost the same breath, he boasts that he would bundle payments to doctors based on the quality, not the quantity, of the services they provide — such quality to be determined by his bureaucratic boards. The House bill is replete with provisions conferring such decisions on government bureaucrats.

Obama misleads us when he and his minions cavalierly dismiss the public's genuine concern about the government, under his plan, insinuating itself into end-of-life decisions. Instead of responding to provisions of the bill legitimately generating such concerns, he puts words into our mouths, saying we claim that the bill would require "euthanasia." Even some of Obama's state-run media fact checkers suggested that Reps. Thaddeus McCotter and John Boehner made that claim. In fact, they said provisions of the bill "could create ... a more permissive environment for euthanasia ... and physician-assisted suicide." Someone needs to check the fact checkers.

Of course there are legitimate concerns here, and it insults our intelligence to suggest otherwise. The bill would immediately impose a monumental conflict of interest on government bureaucrats by tasking them to cut costs drastically while simultaneously empowering them to "counsel" people about their end-of-life (and other) medical care. Such a conflict of interest — over life and death itself — is unconscionable and unthinkable in the United States of America.

The "messiah" has lost his mojo — by betraying his unearned trust with the people.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His book "Bankrupt: The Intellectual and Moral Bankruptcy of Today's Democratic Party" was released recently in paperback. To find out more about David Limbaugh, please visit his Web site at www.DavidLimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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