Obama's Health Care Rhetoric Versus Reality
Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements
The National Taxpayers Union compared Obama’s words in pushing government-run health care in a recent speech and town hall meeting with the language of the bill itself (overview here). NTU also compared the positive (market and consumer oriented) language in the bill with the negative. While Obama used words such as “rights” and “choice” much more frequently in his speech, the language of the bill is considerably more negative. Here’s how the bill shacks out:
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Language of a Busy Bureaucracy…
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Term(s)
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Frequency
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| Require/Required/Requirement(s) | 494 |
| Report(s)/Reporting/Reported | 427 |
| Limit/Limits/Limitation | 167 |
| Penalty/Penalties | 156 |
| Regulations | 91 |
| Tax(es) | 72 |
| Enforce/Enforcement | 48 |
| Must | 47 |
| Prohibit/Prohibiting/Prohibition | 28 |
| Sanction(s) | 21 |
| Obligation/Obligations | 18 |
| Restrict/Restrictive/Restriction | 12 |
| Fines | 3 |
| Total | 1584 |
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Limiting Freedom, Competition, & the Marketplace
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Term(s)
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Frequency
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| Benefit(s) | 375 |
| Choice | 47 |
| Options | 38 |
| Private | 35 |
| Rights | 21 |
| Privacy | 17 |
| Exempt/Exemption | 16 |
| Marketplace | 3 |
| Competition | 3 |
| Consumer-driven | 0 |
| Freedom | 0 |
| Liberty | 0 |
| Patient-driven | 0 |
| Total | 555 |
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.