Attention, ABC News: Get John Stossel on your Obamacare infomercial
ABC News says it welcomes “thoughtful” and “diverse” voices on its White House health care special.
Why not include ABC 20/20 anchor John Stossel? I have confirmed that he has not been asked to be a part of the programming.
Why not?
When it comes to thoughtful and diverse perspectives on freedom, government, and the marketplace, no one matches Stossel.
Here is his report on the state of health care from 2007. An excerpt:
There are many problems with health insurance, but that doesn’t mean we should put the government in control. If it’s decided that health care should be paid for with tax dollars, then it’s up to the government to decide how that money should be spent. There’s only so much money to go around, so the inevitable result is rationing.
It’s just the law of supply and demand. Lowering prices increases demand. Lowering the price to nothing pushes demand through the roof. Author P.J. O’Rourke said it best: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
When health care is free, governments deal with all that increased demand by limiting what’s available.
The reality of “free” health care is that people wait. In the United Kingdom, one in eight patients waits more than a year for hospital treatment and the British government recently set its goal to keep wait times to less than 18 weeks that’s more than four months! In Canada, almost a million citizens are waiting for necessary surgery and more than a million Canadians can’t find a regular doctor. In the small town of Norwood, Ontario, a weekly drawing is held in which a townsperson wins the right to access the town’s one family doctor.
Governments ratchet down health-care costs in different ways. Doctors went on strike last year in Germany because their government’s system pays them less than they thought they deserved and forces them to work thousands of hours of unpaid overtime. In the United Kingdom, one hospital was inspired to save money money by not changing sheets daily. British papers report that instead of washing the linens, nurses were told to just turn the bedsheets over.
Government is less the answer to our health-care crisis than the problem. It was our government that helped to create the absurd system in which two out of three Americans get health insurance through their employer. In a country where four in 10 Americans change their job every year, this system makes little sense; it leaves people like Readling without coverage when they need it most.
The government also makes insurance expensive by mandating the medical services that policies must cover. Required services vary state by state and include massage therapy, pastoral counseling, acupuncture, hair prosthesis and dentures. Such mandates are a reason why an individual policy in New Jersey costs around $4,000 a year while a policy in Iowa costs only a third of that. Yet insurance regulations make it illegal for someone in New Jersey to buy a policy from out of state…
…The more people control the money they spend on their own health care, the more people shop around and the more providers compete to attract patients by lowering prices while improving quality. It’s putting individuals in control that could turn our health-care sector into the vibrant, competitive marketplace that we see in nearly every other area of our economy.
After all, it’s our body and our health. Shouldn’t we be in control of how our health-care dollars are spent?
Harvard’s Herzlinger said, “Who should decide whether you live or die? Do you want the government to decide? Do you want a health insurer to decide? Who’s gonna make that decision? Is it gonna be a government? Is it gonna be an insurer? Or is it gonna be you and me?”
Putting individuals in control of our health rather than our employers or the government is a better way to cure what ails America’s health system.
Send your feedback/suggestions to ABC News here.
More contact info:
ABC SWITCHBOARD (ASK FOR NEWSROOM) 212.456-7777
NEWSROOM fax 212.456.2795
ABC News president David Westin’s fax: 212-456-4292
Westin is on twitter at @David_Westin.
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Indeed…I had forgotten about that book, Ragspierre.
My employee only heath care insurance including medical, dental, and vision costs my company $300 a month or $3,600 a year. To cover 350 million people, that would be $1.2 trillion a year in insurance premiums.
I saw a website that said medical care spending was $2.4 trillion in 2007. That same site said individual premiuims averaged $4,700 per year which is only $1.6 trillion
That doesn’t add up. Insurance takes in $1.6 trillion but costs are $2.4 trillion. And not everyone pays an insurance premium, but they would pay the medical costs.
but but but a reduction in paper work will reduce that 2.4 trillion a year by ALOT right!!!!
/obamabot mode off.
How can any thinking person read Stossel’s words and not be convinced? You’d have to be, well, you’d have to be a liberal, or worse, to not see the wisdom in his words.
Trust the market; and always be suspicious of the government.
The only way ABC would have Stossel participate in this propaganda is if they were going to waterboard him (waterboarding is only considered to be wrong by the left when it’s used against someone who wants to harm America).
Could this infomercial be, in part, the Obama administration’s way of making ABC atone for allowing Stossel to air his various pro-liberty viewpoints? And they sure couldn’t have been happy about Charlie Gibson’s campaign season question pointing out that lower Capital Gains tax rates translated into higher tax revenue. Ol’ Charlie has probably been given plenty of reasons to be genuinely pleased at the opportunity to host their show. But he still can claim a little bit of dignity: what used to be called a “Lewinsky” is now known as a “Brian Williams,” not a “Charlie Gibson.”
The romance between Obama and the MSM has gotten so bad that people have been asking them to “get a room!” Now ABC has gone one better and is moving in with Obama. But taking cameras into the White House with them kinda defeats the purpose. The whole reason we asked them to get a room in the first place was because we’re all sick of watching them making out. Doing it in the Lincoln bedroom doesn’t make it any more appealing.
Stossel would be the perfect journalist for this. Gibson and Stephanapolous are probably the ones that are “questioning” this. We all know they saw birds chirping and they themselves were crying when Obama was inaugurated.
Jake Tapper is not much in my opinion. He still has the Obama thrill up his leg. But not as apparent as many of his colleagues.
True, no one has explained how those currently too po’ to have insurance are going to be able to pay simple co-pays, or the remainder of the bill once insurance pays it’s share. Of course, they’ll have to raise taxes on the “very wealthy,” you know, those making over $60,000 a year, in order to cover those costs for them.
It’s like saying, “We’re going to give everyone a car who cannot pay to have one,” without addressing maintenance, gas and oil, and, oh yeah, insurance…
To think voters actually put these people in office, and keeps re-electing them, makes me wonder what the current average I.Q. is for those living in America who vote, legally or otherwise. I think we would be shocked.
Oh, that is simple…
you give them another “tax credit”, like the last one. Child’s play, see?
And if you believe that one, I just saved 112,000,000 million jobs today.
And nobody in the Federal government is interested in running a car company.
And the thought of anyone setting wages in the financial industry is just silly-talk.
And….
Does this remind anyone of Joseph Goebbels or is it just me?
http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/EricAllie
Ragspierre said:
That would be easy if you were Obama. As Czar of czars, you could hire or fire anyone you want (including the bean counter who keeps track of all the jobs created or saved). Everyone you don’t fire counts toward jobs “saved”, and everyone you fire and replace with a true worshipper counts as jobs “created”. See how easy it is?
Stossel is right. Not only do we need to get the government out of health care, we need to get employers out of health care. GM is basically a health care provider that makes cars on the side. I don’t rely on my employer for my car insurance, why should I have to rely on them for health insurance? Make health insurance and uninsured health care costs tax deductible (which McCain proposed and Obama called a tax increase without any questioning by the media) and let individuals shop for the plans they want in a truly competitive market (which includes breaking down anticompetitive state regulations).