There are different ways to discuss this issue, but Obama voters Drs. Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband highlight a key example in their Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, "Obama's $80 Billion Exaggeration." Obama hyped the results of an IT industry sponsored Rand Company study, saying that the national rollout of electronic medical records would save $80B a year, reduce medical mistakes and malpractice suits, and contain costs associated with chronic illness. The authors review a number of studies casting doubt on all of these alleged benefits; in particular, they cite a recently-published Canadian study reviewing over 3700 papers on patients from seven countries and the use of electronic medical records showed no conclusive advantage or disadvantage in terms of better patient outcomes. The Rand study conveniently dismisses contrary evidence: "We choose to interpret evidence of negative or no effect of health information technology as likely being attributable to ineffective or not-yet-effective implementation." The op-ed authors conclude their column by rightfully saying, "We need the president to apply real scientific rigor to fix our health-care system rather than rely on elegant exercises in wishful thinking."
[As an MIS academic and veteran IT professional, I loathe the use of hype to sell computer technology (including Internet access) for self-evident reasons. One of my own professors ridiculed the purchase of a PC costing thousands in order to replace the functionality of a $1 plastic recipe box. As a computer database administrator, I can, of course, cite numerous reasons to maintain professionally-managed repositories of key data; data can be centralized, instantly accessed, reliably backed up and restored and easily shared among relevant medical professionals; sophisticated rules and alerts can be implemented, and aggregate accumulative data across patients could be mined for health-related insights (e.g., effective utilization of treatments). But they're expensive, involve hard-to-quantify qualitative benefits, and ultimately rely on the functional competence of users: A well-designed information system cannot make up for the shortcomings of a poorly-trained doctor.]
Henninger's current WSJ op-ed piece, entitled "The Obama Rosetta Stone", cites one of the first studies of the pollyannaish Obama economist Romer-Bernstein budget-related projections, which assume unrealistic projections of job gains through 2010 of 3.6M and GNP gains of 3.7%; the article, written by economist John Taylor and others, tempers the classic Keynesian claims with contemporary adjustments (e.g., tentative spending behavior by consumers whom anticipate that Obama will be forced to raise taxes across a broader group of taxpayers to accommodate skyrocketing federal spending) and concludes that the growth and jobs stimulus will be ONE-SIXTH of what the Obama Adminstration claims.
Karl Rove, in his current column "The White House Misfires on Limbaugh", points out some of the disingenuous Obama sleight of hand tricks meant to mislead the American public on the true costs of his social reengineering agenda: cost savings from an American drawdown in Iraq are ongoing (vs. permanent); Obama's increases in SCHIP and new "college access" funding are short-term; Obama's economic growth numbers are more optimistic than the more nonpartisan Blue Chip consensus, implying an upward bias to tax revenues and the reverse for relief spending; Obama's pledge that the highest domestic spending increase in American history over the next two years will be cut in real terms is suspect. [Does anyone really believe that veteran Democratic legislators will risk insurgent liberal challengers hitting them hard on cutting benefits to lower-income people? Every Democrat knows the price former Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman paid in his 2006 Senate primary over just one issue: his dissent from anti-war groupthink for a unilateral American troop withdrawal from Iraq.]
But the good news is that not all Americans are buying our fast-talking President's rhetoric. Pollsters Douglas Schoen and Scott Rasmussen in Friday's Wall Street Journal found over two-thirds of the Americans surveyed don't think Obama's stimulus plan will work, are worried about inflation and the federal budget deficit, and disagree with Obama's philosophy to expand the federal government's footprint (e.g., national health care).
Malia and Sasha get a $1 weekly allowance. I don't think they will be happy when they discover how little a dollar will buy under their dad's economic policies. Perhaps President Obama should worry more about the legacy of his administration's unprecedented deficits written on the backs of his daughters and future grandchildren. Otherwise, he may find himself late in life being signed into one of those government-run nursing homes by his kids.
