• OPINION: WONDER LAND  
  
• JANUARY 27, 2010, 10:55 P.M. ET    [LOOK AT THE TIMESTAMP ON THIS ARTICLE!!](Emphasis added)

"

Why ObamaCare Isn't Flying

It was foolish of President Obama to think he could reform 16% of the nation's economy.

- Daniel Henninger

Daniel Henninger discusses why it was foolish for President Obama to try reordering 16% of the economy. The president's ideas regarding government are antithetical to Apple's entrepreneurship.
See and listen to this article at the WSJ Video link

 

This is the sound of President Obama's health-care reform bill crashing to earth:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday: "We're not on health care now. We talked a lot about it in the past."

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein: "It's a time out." 

The bill's advocates can't believe this is happening. They elected a popular and charismatic Democratic president. With him came a filibuster-proof congressional majority. Done deal. Write the bill, vote it into everlasting life, and burn votive candles to Franklin Roosevelt's unfinished national entitlement legacy.

After seven nonstop months ObamaCare is failing, just as ClintonCare failed after a year's effort in 1994. It's clear there is something inherently wrong in what the Democrats have been trying to do here. What is it?

The answer lies in the often-repeated phrase that they are trying to reform "16% of the American economy." Why would anyone think it possible in 2010—as politics, economics or mere practical feasibility—to reorder 16% of a $14 trillion economy of 300 million people living in 50 separate states whose geography is 16 times larger than France?

The Obama reformers are driven by the idea that their bill would fulfill a dream running back 70 years to 1939, when FDR failed to win passage of a universal health-care bill.

But this isn't 1939. It's not even 1994. American health care, whatever its defects, is today unimaginably complex. What the Democrats are trying to do isn't just difficult. It's impossible.

According to data compiled by Hoover's business research from the U.S. Census, the health-care industry consists of 340,650 separate establishments employing 5,508,926 people. I leave it to a mathematician to calculate the number of possible economic relationships this would produce every day, much less annually .

We have 512,000 physicians and surgeons, 2.2 million registered nurses and a galaxy of different jobs orbiting around them. Some 36% of these are in individual physicians' offices.

One of the jewels of this collection of professionals, which the politicians say is "failing" us, is the U.S. medical-device industry. It has come a long way since the days of "The Clinic of Dr. Gross" in Thomas Eakins's famous painting.

There are 8,616 separate medical-device companies in the U.S., employing 359,065 people. Within the device industry, its two largest categories are electronic and precision equipment and surgical appliances. These are the wizards of American medicine.

The president says the special interests oppose his bill. But to pay for the bill, Congress would levy a $2 billion annual tax on the medical-device industry, which ardently opposes the legislation.

Let's pick a state. How about suddenly famous Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council lists more than 220 companies as primary members. They have weird names like Aeris, ExtruMed, Bioxcell and WunderThink. Yet the Democrats are agog that Massachusetts voted Scott Brown into the Senate.

More . . .

"

==========================================

This is very strong coming from Dan Henninger, Editor of WSJ. He should know; he has been researching and commenting on Health Care reform since 2007-08 campaign days!

Note that the article was published AFTER the SOTU address. Yet, Daniel Henninger, one of the Editors who I respect greatly, concludes that the HCR Bills crashed with those statements from Harry Reid and Diane Feinstein... (despite what was in Pres.Obama's SOTU)!!    So, I thought that is significant.



-- Edited by Sanders on Thursday 28th of January 2010 11:39:09 AM