On Monday, June 15th, President Obama gave a speech in Chicago to the American Medical Association. His speech was design to sell his health care program to the AMA in the hope of getting their support. In the speech, he made a vague, non-binding remark that he would, “explore a range of ideas...", he goes on like that saying things the doctors want to hear but he never really promises them anything. This pattern of Obama's is becoming pretty clear. When he wants to sell something to the American people, he uses buzz words that he knows are music to many peoples ears.

On Tuesday, June 23rd, he continues with his sales pitch focusing on drastic reform and cutting costs. Obama says that, "If any bill arrives from Congress that is not controlling costs, that is not a bill I can support." So everyone nods in agreement. Do we need to cut costs? Yes. Do we need malpractice reform? Yes. Is the American health care system expensive? Yes. Who would disagree with that? Ahh...but the devil is in the details.

President Obama wants a government run health care system. So lets look at some other government run systems and see how they are doing. Social Security, is that a well run program? No, it is going broke because lawmakers raided the trust fund and spent the money that was supposed to go to Social Security. How about Welfare? Is that a well run organization? No, Welfare is expensive, a large portion of every welfare dollar go to bureaucratic overhead. No one knows the real number because welfare spending is hidden from public scrutiny by spreading across multiple departments and programs. This makes tracking the true cost of welfare, and how well the government is managing the money to be extremely difficult. And that is not to mention the amount lost in welfare fraud.

So President Obama is basically telling us that medical costs need to be reduced and that the only way to do that is with a government run health care system. Who believes that one? Social Security is not well managed. The Welfare system is not well managed. NASA is faces cost over runs all the time. The Post Office is struggling, Public parks are crumbling, military projects face huge cost over runs. In fact most government projects come in late, less than promised, and over budget. This is typical of a bureaucratically run system. And that is what you will get with Obama's health care plan. How can you say that you can reduce costs by adding an expensive and inefficient government bureaucracy on the top?

Obama says he will cut costs, that is a lie. Obama says he will improve health care. Based on the European models that he favors, that is also a lie. Can we really trust him with our health care system?

- Thomas Paine 2

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