Catastrophe (15 page)

When the bureaucracy says
no
, it means
no
. It doesn’t mean you need a second opinion. Or that you can pay for the procedure yourself. It means you can’t get a CT scan or MRI—not if the government says
no
.

Skinner’s recent article on the Canadian health care system, published in
The American
, found that “while Americans spend 55 percent more than Canadians for health care as a percentage of their national economy,”
¹⁶²

• The United States has 327 percent more MRI units and 183 percent more CT scanners per capita than Canada.
  ¹⁶³
  
• Doctors in the United States perform twice as many inpatient surgical procedures than Canadian doctors.
  ¹⁶⁴
  
• And there are 14 percent more physicians and 19 percent more nurses in the United States, per capita, than in Canada.
  ¹⁶⁵
  

The study found that the Canadian health care system is a disaster:

When government bureaucrats ration health care, the results can be a disaster. Take the grim story of colon cancer in Canada. Colorectal cancer rates are much higher in Canada (6.7 per 100,000)
¹⁶⁷
than in the United States (4.8 per 100,000.)
¹⁶⁸
And although 41 percent of cases in Canada prove fatal,
¹⁶⁹
only 34 percent in the United States lead to death.
¹⁷⁰

Even though colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of death in Canada, the drug Avastin—the standard treatment in the United States—is not available to patients in Canada through the government health system. “What is going on in Canada is shameful,” says Barry D. Stein, president of the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada. “This treatment, which was finally approved last year in Canada and which was long overdue, is not reaching patients who are desperately in need of…a treatment which is the standard of care in the treatment of the disease.”
¹⁷¹

In British Columbia, parts of Quebec, and parts of New Brunswick, the drug is available for free. But in other provinces, patients have to pay $36,000 for a six-month treatment.
¹⁷²

A second drug for colorectal cancer, Erbitux, which the government approved at the same time as Avastin, has not even been launched in Canada—because the bureaucrats at the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board can’t agree on a price. And two provinces, Ontario and Alberta, are not even paying for a third drug—Oxaliplatin—one of the most standard treatments. To get the care, patients must rely on a “compassionate care” program that the drug manufacturer has set up.

Here are some horror stories about Canadian health care:

To improve services, the Canadian health care system has set certain goals or benchmarks. It is hoping—hoping!—that it can cut the wait for radiation therapy to four to eight weeks.
¹⁷⁸
If only cancer were understanding enough to wait.

It’s not like that in the United States. To begin with, all elderly and poor people are covered through Medicare and Medicaid. If they don’t get adequate care, it’s not because of money. And anyone who lacks insurance or government coverage can always get treatment in an emergency room if their condition requires it. The reason hospitals are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy is that they have to spend so much money treating people who have no insurance. While some may be denied care here or there, lack of coverage isn’t the massive, systemwide problem it is in Canada.

The net effect is that cancer death rates in Canada are 16 percent higher than in the United States.
¹⁷⁹
And heart disease deaths are 5 percent higher.
¹⁸⁰

Why is the Canadian health care system set up this way? Because the government is trying to offer everything to anyone—and ending up giving too little to everyone. Just as in America, there aren’t enough human resources—doctors and nurses—to go around. Even though we have more medical personnel per capita in the United States than Canada does, it’s still not enough to give everybody full coverage.

Ken Lee of the Conservative Party of Manitoba summarizes the defects in the Canadian system:

So the Canadians, like Obama, want to achieve the ideal of full medical care for everybody. But because they are doing nothing to increase the number of doctors and nurses (and, indeed, disincentivize going into those professions), they can’t deliver.

Neither can Obama.

So we face a choice, as Canada did. We can create a system in which everyone is entitled to everything but the shortage of resources empowers the bureaucrats to limit and control access to services so nobody gets adequate care. Or we can approach health care from the other end—the supply side. We can grant real incentives to encourage young people to go into medicine. We can offer lucrative careers, free of government limitations, and grant special scholarships to those willing to work in underserved areas
and to practice general medicine or pediatrics. We can grow our resources and then expand our coverage.

And why won’t Obama follow this prudent course? Because it will take time and by then he is worried that he will lose his political control over Congress and his popularity with the public. Striking while he still has the power may destroy the health care system, but at least he’ll get it passed.

It’s not just wrong to pretend we can extend medical coverage to everyone by legislative fiat without generating more doctors and more nurses—it’s false, and it’s cynical. Even more money won’t solve the problem. Greater financing won’t create more doctors or nurses out of whole cloth. That’s the lesson we must learn from the example of Canada.

We all work to support our families. It’s why we get up in the morning. But if the government tells us that no matter how well we do, how hard we work, how much we succeed, we cannot guarantee our family good medical care—or at least the best available—we will lose a key part of our incentive to work and produce. We surrender control over our own destiny, vesting it in bureaucrats who use statistics instead of human concern to shape their decisions.

This is the brave new world Barack Obama calls “health care reform.” He says he’ll cover everyone. He’ll end up covering no one.

ACTION AGENDA

In 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to extend full health care coverage to everyone. Like Barack Obama, they used the rhetoric of compassion for the uninsured but covered up what the real-world consequences of their program would be.

They made one big mistake: They said they would change the health insurance structure in a bid to save costs by eliminating the middlemen and brokers. In doing so, they threatened to change everybody’s health care. That scared people—and public sentiment turned against the Clintons on the issue.

Learning from their mistakes, President Obama is anxious to reassure Americans that he won’t change health care coverage for anyone who has it now and is happy with it. But that’s not true. When he says he’ll cut the cost
of our coverage by $2,500, he means that he’ll introduce the kind of rationing they have in Canada. He will force our insurance carriers to give us the bad news, but it’s the government that will have called the shots. Obama will never use the word “rationing.” Indeed, he’ll disingenuously deny that he intends it. He’ll call it “efficiency” instead. But his proposal will force rationing of health care whether he admits it or not.

We can’t let that happen. We must mobilize and defeat Obama’s health care proposals. We need to get out the story about medical rationing and what that has led to in Canada. We can’t let him win this fight.

Once everyone is covered, it will be impossible to roll the plan back. The die will have been cast, and we will no longer be able to guarantee our loved ones the care they need in their hour of greatest need.

At www.dickmorris.com, we’ll be helping lead the battle to stop Obama from destroying our health care system. This is priority number one for us. Log on to the site, give us your e-mail address, and we’ll help you get involved in the fight.

We’ve been down this socialized medicine road before. And we can’t let them win this time.

To implement and sustain an agenda as aggressive and far-reaching as President Obama has proposed, it will take a permanent political upheaval in this country, not just one victory in one election. Obama knows that if he can’t use his presidency to realign America’s political parties and power centers to make them friendly to his socialist agenda, he will soon become a footnote in history—a man who attempted bold changes but failed or who passed them only to see them repealed when he lost power.

His election in 2008 opened the door to the changes he wants to make. But to keep them on the books, he must win election after election, winning two terms, keeping a leftist Congress in power, and ensuring that his successor does not reverse his policies.

To do this, he has a four-part plan to create a national political realignment:

1. Grant legal status and then citizenship to as many now-illegal immigrants as possible, so that they’ll vote Democratic far into the future.
   
2. Control the 2010 census, using it to overcount poor people, minorities, and other Democratic constituencies.
   
3. Change the rules of union elections to expand—vastly—the proportion of the labor force who belong to Democratic-controlled unions.
   
4. Use the powers of the Federal Communications Commission to muzzle conservative talk radio.
   

To defeat Obama’s program—or repeal it once it passes—we must stop each of these efforts to change our political system. Let’s begin with his plan to change, forever, the composition of the U.S. electorate.

IMMIGRATION: THE DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL PLOY

One key to Obama’s plan for a permanent liberal majority is to enfranchise large numbers of people who came to this country illegally in order to win their loyalty at the polls.

He knows that the political support of the Latino population is the jump ball that will determine political dominance for a generation.

In recent years, Hispanics’ political allegiance has shifted back and forth depending on how each party cultivated their votes. In the 2000 election, Latinos voted for Gore by thirty points. But in 2004, after four years of assiduous cultivation by George W. Bush, they split more evenly, supporting the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, by only ten points.

But then, when Bush introduced an immigration reform plan that conservative Republicans killed in Congress, Latinos’ loyalties veered sharply back to the Democrats. In 2008, they resumed their habits of 2000 and backed Obama by more than two to one (even though McCain, the Republican candidate, had sponsored the immigration reform bill).

In congressional races, the newly Democratic Latino voters were key. In largely Hispanic districts in New Mexico and Arizona, for example, where Republicans held a 9–2 edge in House seats just three years ago, Democrats have now have the advantage by eight to three.
¹⁸²

And in other elections for Congress throughout the nation, Hispanic voters helped put Democrats over the top.

Obama is determined to keep and exploit this political advantage. He understands, after all, that Latinos are going to be an increasingly dominant force in our politics.

And if Obama can put the 12 to 15 million immigrants who are here illegally on a path to lawful status and then to citizenship, he can increase the Latino voting presence materially—while winning the loyalty of Hispanic-American voters.

So Obama is determined to pass immigration reform. He has said that he’s “very committed” to changing the law and has asked that legislation be “drawn up over the next several months.”
¹⁸³
Though he doubtless realizes that it will be harder to act during a time of high unemployment—when American citizens are competing with illegal immigrants for jobs—he knows he must act while he commands the political arena, with such decisive majorities in Congress.

There appear to be three basic ways in which Obama will expand the ranks of Latino voters in the United States:

1. By legislating an amnesty program for those already here
   
2. By providing incentives for more to come
   
3. By easing the path to naturalization and citizenship once they have gotten amnesty
   

Of course, these ideas will come with a lot of window dressing, including proposals to strengthen border enforcement and stop illegal immigra
tion. But the incentives Obama is proposing will encourage many to leap the fence and come anyway. He’s counting on it.

Congress being Congress, most of the debate on Obama’s immigration reform legislation, when he submits it, will focus on the details of his amnesty provision. He’s certain to follow at least the Bush approach of earned amnesty. Obama has offered us some clues as to his thinking on the subject: in a speech in Los Angeles this spring, he said that “illegal residents who have been in the United States a long time and have put down roots should have a mechanism for achieving legal status. They would have to learn English, pay a significant fine and go to the back of the line of those applying for legal entry.”
¹⁸⁴

By focusing on “illegal residents who have been in the United States a long time and have put down roots,” Obama means that he’ll reward those who have successfully dodged the INS for five years. In return for their hiding out from our laws, he’ll grant them eventual citizenship.

Whatever the final details of his legislative proposals are, the important thing is not the hurdles he’ll ask illegals to jump to acquire legal status. They’ll do whatever he asks. The real question is what incentives he’ll put in place to encourage more and more people to come here, legally or illegally. The lures on this side of the border do far more to determine the flow of immigration than any other factor. And Obama is determined to roll out big prizes for coming here.

Although he claims that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, we already know he’s willing to turn an illegal immigrant into a legal one at the drop of a hat.

And the rewards for immigrants who have achieved legal status will be enormous! Obama plans to extend health care coverage to legal immigrants (even if they have just barely achieved this status through complying with his amnesty provisions). This coverage, of course, would extend to their families as well. Legal immigrants are now eligible for food stamps, disability insurance, and a host of other benefits. Obama will probably agree with Democratic proposals to guarantee in-state tuition at colleges to legal immigrants. He will incentivize leaping the fence—and in doing so he’ll lure millions more Latinos to come here, all in the hope of getting their votes.

And once they come here illegally and then, through amnesty, get legal
status, Obama will speed their path to citizenship and the ballot box. As he told a Spanish-speaking radio audience, “We’re going to start by really trying to work on how to improve the current system so that people who want to be naturalized, who want to become citizens…that they are able to do it; that it’s cheaper, that it’s faster, that they have an easier time in terms of sponsoring family members.”
¹⁸⁵

Why? Because Obama wants their votes. He needs them to keep his socialist agenda from being repealed.

ACTION AGENDA

Republicans must not surrender the Latino vote to Obama.

The president will probably succeed in persuading his top-heavy Democratic majorities in Congress to pass his amnesty proposals for illegal immigrants. But that doesn’t have to mean the end of the Republican Party. Those newly enfranchised Latinos can become loyal Republicans!

Hispanic Americans, particularly Mexican Americans, are often very conservative. One-third now vote Republican. Of the 45 million Latinos in the United States, 15 million are evangelical Protestants who favor the Republican values agenda. They are pro-life and voted overwhelmingly for Bush in 2004.

As the Latinos move up the social and economic ladder, they will inevitably vote more Republican. Only if the GOP convinces them that there’s no room for them in the party will they stay outside.

That would never happen
, you’re thinking. Not so fast: once upon a time, that’s exactly what the Republican Party did to black voters. Before the 1930s, those blacks who could vote overwhelmingly backed the Republicans—the party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. To these African American voters, the Democrats were the party of former slaveholders in the racist South. In the 1930s and 1940s, however, Franklin Roosevelt and, particularly, Harry Truman made important inroads into the black vote. Truman based his comeback victory in 1948 in large part on pushing antilynching laws and integrating the armed forces. But Eisenhower, a Republican, carried the black vote in 1952 and 1956.

It was only when John F. Kennedy telephoned the wife of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., as the civil rights leader languished in a Georgia prison cell, that blacks began to consider his candidacy. Even so, Kennedy edged Nixon out among black voters by only a small margin in 1960.

Then the GOP blew it. Even though a larger percentage of congressional Republicans backed civil rights legislation than did Democrats, in 1964 the party’s presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, voted against the landmark Civil Rights Act, which ended racial discrimination. His vote, and President Johnson’s success in passing the legislation, assured the Democrats of 90 percent of the black vote in 1964. And they have gotten it ever since.

If the Republican Party wishes to avoid extinction—given the swelling numbers of Hispanic voters—it has to be more Latino-friendly, dropping attempts to force English-only initiatives and to curb schooling for illegal immigrants’ children. In 2008, the Republican Party convinced Latinos that it didn’t have their interests at heart. The party must avoid repeating that terrible mistake, lest it become irreversible.

COOKING THE CENSUS

When the U.S. Constitution was written, slaveholders in the southern states worried that the increasing population growth in the North would leave them politically impotent, unable to protect their right to enslave other human beings. So they adopted a provision that each slave—who had no rights and was considered property—would still be counted in the census as five-eighths of a person.

This outrageous provision, which the South made a precondition for approving the Constitution, gave the slaveholders extra votes in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College and helped keep proslavery presidents in office until 1860.

Now President Obama is hoping to use the census to give cities, liberals, and minorities extra representation—just like the slaveholders got in colonial times. This time, they will do so by counting not slaves, but people who may not exist.

For years, Democrats have watched in anguish as their congressional power eroded because people left the Democratic Northeast to flock to Republican states in the South and the West. This massive shift in national population, of course, has created a transfer of House seats, and therefore
of electoral votes to the new states where these folks settled. (The Electoral College vote of each state is the sum of its House and Senate delegations.)

In a bid to arrest the decline, Democrats have long argued that census counts are false because the poor, immigrants, and inner-city residents are not fully counted. Part of the blame falls on the poor themselves, who, it is said, often don’t cooperate with visits from census takers out of fear of the police or immigration authorities. Others blame high crime in urban areas, claiming that census takers are reluctant to go into these areas and residents are shy about opening their doors to strangers.

So the Democrats have long sought to use statistical sampling procedures to ramp up the counts of inner-city populations. Republicans have rejected their proposals, and the Supreme Court has ruled against some of their sampling plans in the past. (Since the census is specifically mandated in the Constitution, the Court has ample jurisdiction.)

The census of 2010, which will be the first conducted by a Democratic administration in thirty years, will not only determine the distribution of House seats at the federal level, it will also shape the distribution of state legislative seats throughout the nation. And these are especially important, since it will be the state legislatures, elected under new lines based on the new census, that will draw the legislative districts for the federal House of Representatives, largely determining its partisan balance.

A good census could give either party a decade of political power.

For example, under the Clinton administration, census takers refused to count Mormon missionaries who live permanently in Utah but serve overseas. As a result, Republican Utah lost a fourth congressional seat. (Under proposals to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House—undoubtedly a Democrat—Utah would get its extra seat, almost certain to be Republican.)