With the Democrats getting slaughtered -- or should I say, "receiving mandatory end-of-life counseling" -- in the debate over national health care, the Obama administration has decided to change the subject by indicting CIA interrogators for talking tough to three of the world's leading Muslim terrorists.
Had I been asked, I would have advised them against reinforcing the idea that Democrats are hysterical bed-wetters who can't be trusted with national defense while also reminding people of the one thing everyone still admires about President George W. Bush.
But I guess the Democrats really want to change the subject. Thus, here is Part 2 in our series of liberal lies about national health care.
(6) There will be no rationing under national health care.
Anyone who says that is a liar. And all Democrats are saying it. (Hey, look -- I have two-thirds of a syllogism!)
Apparently, promising to cut costs by having a panel of Washington bureaucrats (for short, "The Death Panel") deny medical treatment wasn't a popular idea with most Americans. So liberals started claiming that they are going to cover an additional 47 million uninsured Americans and cut costs ... without ever denying a single medical treatment!
Also on the agenda is a delicious all-you-can-eat chocolate cake that will actually help you lose weight! But first, let's go over the specs for my perpetual motion machine -- and it uses no energy, so it's totally green!
For you newcomers to planet Earth, everything that does not exist in infinite supply is rationed. In a free society, people are allowed to make their own rationing choices.
Some people get new computers every year; some every five years. Some White House employees get new computers and then vandalize them on the way out the door when their candidate loses. (These are the same people who will be making decisions about your health care.)
Similarly, one person might say, "I want to live it up and spend freely now! No one lives forever." (That person is a Democrat.) And another might say, "I don't go to restaurants, I don't go to the theater, and I don't buy expensive designer clothes because I've decided to pour all my money into my health."
Under national health care, you'll have no choice about how to ration your own health care. If your neighbor isn't entitled to a hip replacement, then neither are you. At least that's how the plan was explained to me by our next surgeon general, Dr. Conrad Murray.
(7) National health care will reduce costs.
This claim comes from the same government that gave us the $500 hammer, the $1,200 toilet seat and postage stamps that increase in price every three weeks.
The last time liberals decided an industry was so important that the government needed to step in and contain costs was when they set their sights on the oil industry. Liberals in both the U.S. and Canada -- presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and Canadian P.M. Pierre Trudeau -- imposed price controls on oil.
As night leads to day, price controls led to reduced oil production, which led to oil shortages, skyrocketing prices for gasoline, rationing schemes and long angry lines at gas stations.
You may recall this era as "the Carter years."
Then, the white knight Ronald Reagan became president and immediately deregulated oil prices. The magic of the free market -- aka the "profit motive" -- produced surges in oil exploration and development, causing prices to plummet. Prices collapsed and remained low for the next 20 years, helping to fuel the greatest economic expansion in our nation's history.
You may recall this era as "the Reagan years."
Freedom not only allows you to make your own rationing choices, but also produces vastly more products and services at cheap prices, so less rationing is necessary.
(8) National health care won't cover abortions.
There are three certainties in life: (a) death, (b) taxes, and (C) no health care bill supported by Nita Lowey and Rosa DeLauro and signed by Barack Obama could possibly fail to cover abortions.
I don't think that requires elaboration, but here it is:
Despite being a thousand pages long, the health care bills passing through Congress are strikingly nonspecific. (Also, in a thousand pages, Democrats weren't able to squeeze in one paragraph on tort reform. Perhaps they were trying to save paper.)
These are Trojan Horse bills. Of course, they don't include the words "abortion," "death panels" or "three-year waits for hip-replacement surgery."
That proves nothing -- the bills set up unaccountable, unelected federal commissions to fill in the horrible details. Notably, the Democrats rejected an amendment to the bill that would specifically deny coverage for abortions.
After the bill is passed, the Federal Health Commission will find that abortion is covered, pro-lifers will sue, and a court will say it's within the regulatory authority of the health commission to require coverage for abortions.
Then we'll watch a parade of senators and congressmen indignantly announcing, "Well, I'm pro-life, and if I had had any idea this bill would cover abortions, I never would have voted for it!"
No wonder Democrats want to remind us that they can't be trusted with foreign policy. They want us to forget that they can't be trusted with domestic policy.