(1) The current healthcare system, run by evil insurance barons (who presumably look like this), is paralyzingly scary: uncovered college grads, overburdened small business owners, laid-off workers with pre-existing conditions who have an rare form of ebola that isn't covered by their uncle's policy, you get the idea. It's scary stuff! Oogaboogaboogabooga!
(2) ObamaCare will solve all of these problems. (Although with nary a mention of its $1 TRILLION pricetag, one is left to assume that ObamaCare involves unicorns and magic beans.)
(3) The price of inaction will be... yep... CATASTROPHE, so WE MUST ACT NOW:
Without reform, we will miss out on these [magical] benefits. And our health-care system will still be a fiscal time bomb. Recent estimates indicate that by 2040, health-care costs will eat up 34 percent of our gross domestic product. By comparison, the entire federal budget today is just 20 percent of our GDP. By acting now, we have the chance to slow health-care costs in a way that doesn't slash benefits or reduce care. Instead, we can make investments in prevention, wellness and health information technology that will allow the health-care system to deliver incredible results at prices we can all afford. Imagine a system in which your doctor spends as much time trying to keep you healthy as treating you when you're sick, in which you and your doctor have all the information you need to choose the treatments that work best for you, in which you never have to fill out the same paperwork twice. Health reform is the first step in that direction.Unfortunately for Secretary Sebelius, embarrassing new video popped up yesterday of her utterly failing to explain the ObamaCare "urgency" (point #3) - as manifest in Congress' willingess to pass ObamaCare without reading the underlying legislation - to an audience of curious (and admittedly agitated!) Pennsylvania voters:
President Obama and I are working closely with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and health-care experts to make sure we get the details of health reform right. But we can't let the details distract us from the huge benefits that reform will bring. The urgency behind reform has nothing to do with the schedule of Congress and everything to do with the needs of the American people.
Nor should we let ourselves be distracted by attacks that try to use the complexity of health reform to freeze Americans in inaction. We've learned over the past 20 years that "socialized medicine" and "government-run health care" are code words for "don't change anything." With some insurers raising premiums by more than 25 percent and 14,000 people losing their health insurance every day, Americans want to hear something more from their leaders than "wait and see" and "more of the same." People have enough to worry about these days. Americans deserve the peace of mind that only health-care reform can provide.
Talk about bad timing!
I assume that the op-ed was drafted before the Pennsylvania townhall, but who knows? Maybe the reason why Sebelius is urging the American people to not be "distracted" by the "details" is because she is utterly incapable of explaining or defending them. And keep in mind that this is not some first-term congressman from Shelbyville. It's the Secretary of HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES - basically the person who under ObamaCare would be in charge of completely reorganizing one-sixth of the US economy, and the woman who is writing today under that important title to convince the American people that we MUST ACT NOW!
Ugh. Maybe she should send her ghostwriter to the next townhall meeting.
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