The Left Is Self-Destructing Over Health Care reform

Everyone should read Camille Paglia's post on The Obama Healthcare Horror.

Obama seems to be surrounded by juvenile tinhorns, bumbling mediocrities
and crass bully boys.
Case in point: the administration's grotesque
mishandling of healthcare reform, one of the most vital issues facing the
nation. Ever since Hillary Clinton's megalomaniacal annihilation of our last
best chance at reform in 1993 (all of which was suppressed by the mainstream
media when she was running for president), Democrats have been longing for that
happy day when this issue would once again be front and center.

But who
would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing
to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede
the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious,
solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her
smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre
rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing
grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down.

The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch
operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq
with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.

You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy
with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And
what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards
for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance
company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled
competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither
nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to
rationing.

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in
three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to
present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The
U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The
bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here
would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings
Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of
red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering
economy.

As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama
foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at
once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public
support. How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and
arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist
Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of
government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare
legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out
of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth
for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their
own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown
to the wolves.