Sarah Palin’s Wall Street Journal Health Care Op-Ed.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Former governor and VP candidate Sarah Palin wrote a pretty good op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on the health care situation – one where she points out, repeatedly, that we’re being asked to blindly fund a government program that will affect every aspect of our life and will not save us money in either the short or long term.  As Ace of Spades notes, this is not going to cover new ground for the people already intimately familiar with the debate – but for those who aren’t, it will give a good idea of conservative objections to Obamacare, not to mention providing the alternatives that the Democrats are pretending that the Republicans aren’t providing.  All in all, useful and timely.

And, as an added, special bonus, it includes the written equivalent of a smack on the nose:

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs. In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”

Given such statements, is it any wonder that many of the sick and elderly are concerned that the Democrats’ proposals will ultimately lead to rationing of their health care by—dare I say it—death panels? Establishment voices dismissed that phrase, but it rang true for many Americans. Working through “normal political channels,” they made themselves heard, and as a result Congress will likely reject a wrong-headed proposal to authorize end-of-life counseling in this cost-cutting context. But the fact remains that the Democrats’ proposals would still empower unelected bureaucrats to make decisions affecting life or death health-care matters. Such government overreaching is what we’ve come to expect from this administration.

Bolding mine – and I laughed when I read it. I am actually not a heavy Palin booster – it’s much more accurate to say that I am instinctively and reflexively opposed to people who cannot write about their political enemies without immediately allowing themselves to write hateful things, which is a frighteningly common problem for Palin critics – but there’s something exceptionally fun about seeing lines like that. The entire ‘death panels’ issue was one that the media kept worrying at and worrying at, and even the ones that deigned to admit that THAT WOMAN had an actual point were ever-so-disapproving at the way that Palin expressed it. The unapologetic and humorous (that’s important) way that the former governor referred back to it is refreshing.

It’ll also be infuriating, if people like Marc Ambinder are any guide. To the point where spelling suffers and Freudian slips rule the day:

ambinderfreudian

I imagine that there are in fact many people out there who would like to be the ones who get to speak for the party’s ‘principals.’  I wouldn’t mind getting the job myself – or at least the opportunity to give those principals a polite, yet emphatic, rant about how they need to work for the grassroots (which includes showing those grassroots how they’re working for them).  But then, I also wouldn’t mind getting a pony – and the lack of either doesn’t cause me to write somewhat bitter articles about my inability to just call up the Wall Street Journal and place an op-ed any time that I like.

Not that I’m suggesting anything, of course.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

22 thoughts on “Sarah Palin’s Wall Street Journal Health Care Op-Ed.”

  1. Palin is able to get the attention of the WhiteHouse speaking in every day language. I think there will be a lot of people looking for someone who doesn’t use words to game the American people and the system in 2010. There really aren’t any issues that I disagree with Palin on, but then I’ve taken the time to find out what she’s all about rather then trusting ANYONE to tell me what she’s about. Without Sarah, there’s a chance that bill would have been stuffed down our throat. There is no doubt that she has been a major player is slowing down this colassal mistake of a bill and giving us a chance to fight the take over. No other self-appointed big headed blow hard “jounalist” is as effective as this warrior from Alaska.

  2. Sarah has open the door for the masses to fight the big government takeover. Time to vote out ideologue in the government top and down. No more subsidies for special interest groups, big spending and stop corporations getting in bed with big government.

  3. Mr. Ambinder does seem a little unhappy — perhaps because the Backwoods Babe got a plum op-ed in the WSJ? Doesn’t she know that one has to earn the right to speak for the principals? Mr. Ambinder, I suspect, is some surprised that Gov. Palin actually can string a sentence together let alone put a good-sized oar into the health care takeover.

    It’s too bad for the Backwoods Babe that she didn’t go to Harvard (well, Yale would have been better or at the very least, Brown). Perhaps if she had done that and had spent the requisite time working as a Congressional staffer, with the obligatory stop off at a liberal think-tank or NGO, she could be permitted to speak.

  4. May I suggest to those that are concerned about writing for the Republican Party that if they just write for themselves, then they might find themselves not just writing for the Republican party, but for the American people?

  5. Armbinder so does not get it. The very fact that Palin is *not* one of the ‘Republican health care spokespeople’ is exactly why she resonates with a vast swath of American people.

    A very large and rapidly growing number of Americans are keenly aware that we’ve been listening to Armbinder-esque ‘spokespeople’ for far too long and that got us the election of what will probably be the most destructive combination of POTUS and Congress this nation has ever seen.

  6. The Associated Press is already misrepresenting/spinning Palin’s op/ed. Their article is titled “Palin blasts health care reform in WSJ editorial,” sub-titled “Palin sticks to ‘death panel’ claim in Wall Street Journal editorial on health care reform,” and in the body: “She also reiterated her claim that so-called death panels would make end-of-life decisions, a notion that has been widely discredited.”

    But I’m sure that they don’t have a dog in this hunt.

  7. Cut to the chase.

    Democrats object that health care funding decisions are made by insurance company bureaucrats sitting in cubicles, hounded by managers to stay within budget, and obedient to the book of Corporate Policy.

    Instead, they propose that health care funding decisions be made by Government bureaucrats sitting in cubicles, hounded by managers to stay within budget, and obedient to a whole bookshelf full of Federal Regulations which the SEIU declares they are not obliged to know. This, they tell us, will not only be cheaper, it will be better for everybody. Me, I don’t see it.

    Regards,
    Ric

  8. “I am instinctively and reflexively opposed to people who cannot write about their political enemies without immediately allowing themselves to write hateful things, which is a frighteningly common problem for Palin critics”

    Truer words were never spoken, Moe, and I’m cross posting this on my blog with a link back. Thanks for saying what I’ve been trying to express for months.

    Jason

  9. Ric is spot on. The difference is I can sue an insurance company but the government I can’t. Truth be told that medicare and medicaid are already being subsidized by private health insured patients. This monstrosity will only result in more forced subsidies until the carriers simply go out of the health insurance business.

    Ultimately what will happen is that the wealthy and the upper middle class will avail themselves to health insurance policies that pay for treatment overseas for the big ticket treatments and leave the fairly small stuff to national health.

  10. Mrs. Palin gets attention because she is, at the moment, the only “star” within the Republican Party. The left hates here because she is everything they espouse…a woman who literally has it all, a career and a family. They see her as a danger to feminism because she is the embodiment of feminism, except for one small facet. She’s not a liberal.

    Now, for “health care reform”. It’s not about “reform” but rather, it’s about goverment siezure and control of yet more of the economy. It’s not enough that the government controls banking and finance now (thanks to the ilconsidered banking TARP last fall/spring), or taking over of GM (and turning it over to UAW), now they want to control your health care.

    The Democratic party wants to control the populacce by controlliing who gets health care and who doesn’t. I might have supported this if Congress and all federal employees were going to be covered by the “public option”. But, unfortunately, they are specifically exempted from it.

    Organized labour is FOR the public option, because they will then be able to dump all of their retireess into it, and thus avoid the huge liability that has built up over the past several decades. Organized labour’s leadership has systematically looted their retirement and health insurance funds to pay off corrupt officials and enrich themselves. Now, they want the government to take over that liabilty freeing them for more looting…

  11. Let’s see. Sarah Palin makes a comment on Twitter, and her comments are debated for weeks, and ring true to a huge segment of Americans. So, when Ambinder calls into questions her intelligence and abilities (I am being charitable here), he is really saying that this huge segment of Americans must be even dumber than her. A winning strategy if I have ever seen one!

    The high-handed elitist approach is on display (all these genuises know what I need better than I do) and our “betters” really don’t like it when we don’t listen.

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  13. The “panel” has already been selected and funded for $1.1 billion through the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research-CER) It has affectionately been described as “the road to dehumanizing bureaucratic health care rationing.” It doesn’t take much imagination to see where CER could lead when it comes to end-of-life type decision making for care.

    Is it possible that this is just one more source of angst for the statists? Once again, a plan with no plan and no forethought digging a bigger and bigger hole for huge indebtedness and administrative debaucle.

    By the way, did those clunker dealers ever get their money? Last I heard they were 100’s of thousands in debt because the government had paid only 2% of what they owed them. Oh, and buyers be sure to pay your taxes on the “taxable income of” $4500 and keep the IRS off your backs…..

  14. Palin is hated for the same reason she is loved: because she is very effective at saying things many Americans recognize as being true, in a way that non-elites can understand and relate to. Obama is said to be such a wonmderful communicator because he can parrot the leftist tropes in which he has been immersed his entire adult life in ways that elites like academics, East Coast pundits, “news” mavens and others steeped in the code language of the elite Left are used to. Palin does the same thing, only she is speaking to an audience that feels ignored, condescended to and reviled by the elites of both parties. She is also speaking to an audience that thinks America is a fundamentally good country, not a fundamentally bad or misguided one. This the Left cannot abide.

    Palin also says things that are true. Obama changes his story evey day, and often even in the same sentence. He is the first truly postructuralist president, interested only in the narrative he thinks the unwashed need to hear to keep him in power. It worked to get him elected, but the rubes are catching on. Palin pulls the curtain aside on Obama, the media and the elites and exposes them for the contemptuous, disingenuous, America–disdaining maniplulators ordinary Americans know they are. She was right during the campaign about Obama’s resume being thinner than hers. She is right about the vicious, dishonest media. And she is right about this health care effort. That’s why she’s popular and that’s why she’s hated. Both her fans and enemies know she’s right and can communicate that effectively.

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