My Bet Is On "Lying"

Ed Morrissey makes the observation, "When people tell us that the health-care system in this country is broken, they’re either ignorant or lying."  He has the facts to back it up.

How badly is that system and how unhealthy are Americans?  According to the CDC, we keep extending our life expectancy to all-time highs and keep reducing disease in the US.

[...] 

The CDC data shows it’s no fluke:

– Record high life expectancy was recorded for both males and females (75.3 years and 80.4 years, respectively). While the gap between male and female life expectancy has narrowed since the peak gap of 7.8 years in 1979, the 5.1 year difference in 2007 is the same as in 2006.

– For the first time, life expectancy for black males reached 70 years.

– The U.S. mortality rate fell for the eighth straight year to an all-time low of 760.3 deaths per 100,000 population in 2007 — 2.1 percent lower than the 2006 rate of 776.5. The 2007 mortality rate is half of what it was 60 years ago (1532 per 100,000 in 1947.) …

– Between 2006 and 2007, mortality rates declined significantly for eight of the 15 leading causes of death. Declines were observed for influenza and pneumonia (8.4 percent), homicide (6.5 percent), accidents (5 percent), heart disease (4.7 percent), stroke (4.6 percent), diabetes (3.9 percent), hypertension (2.7 percent), and cancer (1.8 percent).

If there is one thing evident from this great health care debate, it is this.  Improving health care is not the objective.  This is about power.  The assault on the American health care system is intended to usher in a new era of progressive domination in American politics.

As it happens, the White House is running into more trouble on it.  Patterico points to this:

Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill.

But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

"I don't understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We've gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don't understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."

"It's a mystifying thing," he added. "We're forgetting why we are in this."

Nah.  It ain't mystifying.

Comments

[CaptDMO]

Tell me again why it's NOW entirely permissible for the Executive Branch of gum'mint to
request the not-for-profit, tax exempt, (this means "at taxpayer expense" to SOME "economists") "Churches" (as in church-and-state fame)to carry it's water through their pulpits?

Wasn't there some sort of brew ha ha about that when taxes for abortion, cloning, advance directive, "gay" issues, and "Womans" issues, were being debated amongst the hoi polli, and turning up as poignant rebuttal in public forums, as well as Legislators "answering machines"?

[Tom Bowler]

I think the more troubling is the back room deal between the White House and the Pharmaceuticals in which the the White House agreed to cap the Pharmaceuticals' expenses at $80 billion. In return the Pharmaceuticals plan to lay out for $150 million to promote Obama's health care reform, with a large chunk of that business going to Axelrod's old consulting firm with which Axelrod's son is still connected. They are lining their own pockets, even if indirectly, and MSM has very little interest in the story. And when you consider how hard they worked trying to create the impression of a Cheney/Haliburton conflict of interest!

[Geoff Brown]

I suspect the left of the left has kept their bearings better than the more moderate left. The left of the left knows they are after the chance to run people's lives and this is one of their best tools. The middle of the left may be forgetting that goal.
Or not. The middle of the left may want anything that legitimates the concept of the federal government interfering in health care and health care financing. These are folks who are masters at getting the rest of the camel in behind its nose. They're not the only ones but by gosh they're the best.