01 Jan 2009 White House Health Care Reform: It’s a Matter of Trust, by Murdock “Doc” Gibbs
White House Health Care Reform: It’s a Matter of Trust by Murdock “Doc” Gibbs (bio) |
The following is my reply to an unsolicited e-mail I received from David Alexrod, President Obama’s senior advisor. Axelrod’s letter, which was recently received – unsolicited – by many Americans, asked me to help promote the President’s health care agenda:
Dear Mr. Axelrod,
Thank you for your letter encouraging me to support President Obama’s plan to fundamentally restructure the way Americans obtain their health care.
Because you and President Obama seem to have no qualms whatsoever about building yet another big government bureaucracy and increasing our taxes, I’m afraid I cannot support it or your efforts to get it passed into law.
From news reports, and from actually reading portions of the House version of the proposal myself, it is untenable for me to even trust the Obama Administration on the issue of health care.
Why? Please let me cite a few examples.
The President says he is not pushing for a single-payer plan. Yet, in a 2003 video of him addressing the AFL-CIO, he clearly says his intent is to create a singe-payer, universal, government-controlled health care plan: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan.”
And this is not the only video you can find online that indicates opinions contrary to what he has said since his polls began to fall. These videos are not cut and paste jobs. You know what he said.
It seems the President is now simply telling people what he thinks they want to hear. It seems terribly disingenuous.
Additionally, one of the architects of the universal health care plan, Representative John Dingell (D-MI), says that taxpayer-funded abortion is not a part of the bill. Yet, according to Associated Press, taxpayer-funded abortion is part of the bill.
AP reports: “Health care legislation before Congress would allow a new government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions, a decision that would affect millions of women and recast federal policy on the divisive issue.”
Which is it?
President Obama also pledged several times during the campaign and after his election that there would be no middle-class tax increases, yet your spokespeople say it is a very real possibility that taxes will increase on the middle class to help pay for this gargantuan proposal. In fact, he effectively already broke his promise when he signed into law a tobacco tax increase earlier this year.
Liberals now call opponents of Obama’s health care proposal who show up at town hall meetings with their congressional representatives as “mobs,” “brown shirts” and “astroturf” hired by insurance companies and partisan operatives. It seems that there is not even one iota of consideration that these people could be regular American citizens – constituents of these very same lawmakers – who have real concerns about this proposal and the speed at which you want to push it through.
Mr. Axelrod, when I attend a local town hall meeting to voice my concerns and ask questions, it is offensive that I do so already being branded as some kind of kook or hired mouthpiece.
Lastly, while there might be some misinformation out there, and if I had the opportunity to actually report something “fishy” – as, at one point, the Obama Administration called on Americans to do – I would report the conduct and contradictions of the Obama Administration while trying to pass this monstrous government intrusion into health care as supremely “fishy.”
Quite frankly, it stinks.
Mr. Axelrod, count me out of supporting yet another trillion-dollar proposal from the Obama Administration.
I don’t trust you.
Murdock “Doc” Gibbs
Coppell, Texas