The doctors are paid in part by “health points” that they earn. If you have a sickness and they cure you they get health points based on a ration on how quickly and cheaply they cured you and how long you stay healthy.
So how many “health points” will the doctor get when confronted with a 66 year old with stage two colon cancer? A person with pancreatic cancer, a premature child that needs intensive care in the first weeks of life to survive?
How about we just add language to the bills saying that, for example : Section XXXX shall never be construed as to force doctors to make certain decisions that the doctor and patient feel are not in their best interests. Or XXX section shall never be construed to use any form of cost/benefit analysis to avoid paying for or authorizing benefits to anyone based on age, mental status, weight, disease etc etc…. OR perhaps a section banning payments for any form of abortion or euthanasia…..
But they aren’t offering that as a solution are they.
But here is the dirty little secret, Republicans had tried to get such language inserted and the Democrats faught it tooth and nail.
Solutions?? How about we just add language to the bills saying that, for example : Section XXXX shall never be construed as to force doctors to make certain decisions that the doctor and patient feel are not in their best interests. Or XXX section shall never be construed to use any form of cost/benefit analysis to avoid paying for or authorizing benefits to anyone based on age, mental status, weight, disease etc etc…. OR perhaps a section banning payments for any form of convenience abortion or euthanasia…..
But they aren’t offering that as a solution are they.
But here is the dirty little secret, Republicans had tried to get such language inserted and the Democrats faught it tooth and nail.
It is correct that the words “death panel” are not in the bill, but Stephanapolous has been around a while and knows full well that he is being disingenuous. The bill sets up 45 bureaucracies that will judge whether you get treatment or not based on “communal standards” and cost benefit analysis that they have free reign to set up under whose value system?. What mathematical formula tells a bureaucrat to put a pacemaker in an 84 year old grandparent? How can you say that “death panels” aren’t a vitally descriptive term for what is going on when people who have advocated population control/euthanasia are so deeply involved in this process?
Who will be getting these bureaucracy jobs??… wonks, political appointees and cronies; groups of people who have an annoying habit of being frightening extreemists just like Cass Sunstien, Dr. Emmanuel and John Holdren who are all advising President Obama.
Why should 45 government bureaucracies be getting between you and your doctor anyways? Is anyone to believe that these bureaucrats and panels will just be handing out advice and nothing will be mandatory???….if so, what would they know that you and your doctor do not know about your treatment and how will all that bureaucracy make health care cheaper?
As far as Democrats insistence that their incentives and “inherent efficiencies” will significantly bring downcosts:
The far left blogosphere and news are trying to defend Emmanuel’s statements and are trying to say anything to “refute” what is presented here by Gov. Palin and Prof. Jacobson.
The left has several factual problems that amount to arguing that the sky is not blue.
For starters, Obama says that old people should take the pill instead of have the surgery on the ABC News Special. Add to this that Cass Sunstien and John Holdren, two other presidential advisors are on the record and in writing about a policy that can fairly be described as a “death panel” type of rationing.
In essence, case that the far left is trying to make boiled down to this; by adding a trillion dollar bureaucracy between you and your doctor will save money…
1. And will save that money in spite of the fact that they say they will add 50 million people to the health care rolls,
2. And we will save money when another 83 million from people who’s employers will dump their insurance plan and move their employees to the public option,
3. And we wills till save money when we add all those with pre-existing conditions,
4. And we will save that money with that bureaucracy making absolutely NO rationing choices at all about the old or young, or limit your private health choices in any way (in spite of what is on page 16 (LINK 1, 2, 3) …. AND while making sure that wait times for care will not increase as in the cases of Canada and Britain.
5. And we will do it while not passing any meaningful tort (bogus lawsuit) reform.
Former Clinton Political Strategist Dick Morris with Eileen McGann:
The health-reform debate on Capitol Hill is skipping over the key issue: “Universal insurance” means less care for people who have coverage now — especially the elderly.
And the “compromises” now under way only make the problem worse.
Here’s a point that’s no surprise except to the “reformers”: People with insurance use more health care.
President Obama seeks to cover 50 million new people. Where are the extra doctors, nurses and so on going to come from? Neither the administration nor anyone on the Hill has proposed anything to add to the supply of medical services even as they plan vastly to increase the demand.
The politicians are playing a Washington game — compromising on false or tangential issues while failing to address the central one.
It doesn’t matter if you reduce or eliminate the mandate for employers to provide coverage, if you’re still insuring more people without adding medical personnel and other resources. Same story for whether you replace the “public option” government-run plan with government-run “co-ops.”
More, all the bills come up with cash to cover their huge costs by ordering cuts in Medicare — cuts that Congress could reverse only by affirmative majority votes. Basically, the government will be paying doctors and providers even less to treat the elderly — at a time when countless doctors are starting to refuse new Medicare patients.
More demand; no added supply; Medicare cuts: It all adds up to rationing — lower-quality medical care for most Americans, especially for the elderly.
A doctor in Massachusetts — where an Obama-style plan is already in place — recently told us that she now has to read 60 mammograms a day in the time she once spent on 45. “It keeps me up at night,” she told us, “that I might make a mistake, I am so rushed.”
For the elderly, it means less care, period. A federal health board will sit in judgment of medical procedures and protocols and impose guidelines on all providers for when to withhold certain kinds of care.
For example, the drug Avastin is widely used in America to treat advanced colon cancer. But it costs $50,000 a year — so Canada’s national-health system doesn’t permit its use. As a result, 41 percent of colon-cancer patients in Canada die each year, as opposed to 32 percent in the United States. (Canada’s average eight-month wait for colonoscopies, another result of national-health rationing, also contributes to the problem.)
Members of Congress will be home through August to test public opinion. It’s up to us to give them an earful.
Both fly in the face of human nature and basic market forces.
Why does the postal service lose billions every year while UPS and Fed Ex have better technology, better service, and operate at a profit? (LINK)
When any company loses business to a competitor what do they do? They lower prices and increase the quality and/or value to the customer. So what is the Postal Service doing to “mitigate” its losses??
The Postal Service seeks to end Saturday delivery (LINK) and raise prices (LINK).
So how can this be when it is the goal of evil corporations to make a profit and it is the noble goal of the Postal Service to merely break even?
Could it be that “inherent efficiencies” in the “system” tend to be found in private entities and not government ones?
The government is making the case with ObamaCare we will all save money because of what they call “inherent efficiencies” in a government system over the private one we have now.
Would it be too much to ask to try these “inherent efficiencies” out on the Post Office first before they start messing with my doctor?
UPDATE – WOW! Obama uses the same analogy that we did here, but he forgot how less efficient and debt ridden the Postal Service is.
Dirty Secret No. 1 in Obamacare Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Health care reforms are turning into health care revolts. Americans are turning up the heat on congressmen in town hall meetings across the U.S.
While watching these political hot August nights, I decided to research the reasons so many are opposed to Obamacare to separate the facts from the fantasy. What I discovered is that there are indeed dirty little secrets buried deep within the 1,000-plus page health care bill.
Dirty secret No. 1 in Obamacare is about the government’s coming into homes and usurping parental rights over child care and development.
It’s outlined in sections 440 and 1904 of the House bill (Page 838), under the heading “home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children.” The programs (provided via grants to states) would educate parents on child behavior and parenting skills.
The bill says that the government agents, “well-trained and competent staff,” would “provide parents with knowledge of age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains … modeling, consulting, and coaching on parenting practices,” and “skills to interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development.”
Are you kidding me?! With whose parental principles and values? Their own? Certain experts’? From what field and theory of childhood development? As if there are one-size-fits-all parenting techniques! Do we really believe they would contextualize and personalize every form of parenting in their education, or would they merely universally indoctrinate with their own?
Are we to assume the state’s mediators would understand every parent’s social or religious core values on parenting? Or would they teach some secular-progressive and religiously neutered version of parental values and wisdom? And if they were to consult and coach those who expect babies, would they ever decide circumstances to be not beneficial for the children and encourage abortions?
One government rebuttal is that this program would be “voluntary.” Is that right? Does that imply that this agency would just sit back passively until some parent needing parenting skills said, “I don’t think I’ll call my parents, priest or friends or read a plethora of books, but I’ll go down to the local government offices”? To the contrary, the bill points to specific targeted groups and problems, on Page 840: The state “shall identify and prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families.”
Are we further to conclude by those words that low-income families know less about parenting? Are middle- and upper-class parents really better parents? Less neglectful of their children? Less needful of parental help and training? Is this “prioritized” training not a biased, discriminatory and even prejudicial stereotype and generalization that has no place in federal government, law or practice?
Bottom line: Is all this what you want or expect in a universal health care bill being rushed through Congress? Do you want government agents coming into your home and telling you how to parent your children? When did government health care turn into government child care?
Government needs less of a role in running our children’s lives and more of a role in supporting parents’ decisions for their children. Children belong to their parents, not the government. And the parents ought to have the right — and government support — to parent them without the fed’s mandates, education or intervention in our homes.
Kids are very important to my wife, Gena, and me. That’s why we’ve spent the past 17 years developing our nonprofit KICKSTART program in public schools in Texas. It builds up their self-esteem and teaches them respect and discipline. Of course, whether or not they participate in the program is their and their parents’ choice.
Be sure to follow the link above and read the rest.
The Obama Admionistration asked you to send emails from friends that oppose or report on the ObamaCare bill to flag@whitehouse.gov. In essence they are asking you to report citizens as enemies of the state.
The administration says that they are not collecting names or such, they just want to collect “disinformation”.
But here is the problem. It is illegal to delete any info from White House communications. Everything is archived forever (theoretically by law anyways). So if they are doing this it is illegal, BUT if they arent it is still illegal because it is illegal for the federal government to track peoples exercize of their Fisst Amendment rights as the FBI did in the 50′s and 60′s.
The Hill Magazine is reporting that the White House has set up a “heathcare war room” to undermine and get around citizens who oppose the ObamaCare bill.
Hudson Senior Fellow and former Lt. Governor of new York Betsy McCaughey: The House bill empowers the Health & Human Services Secretery to use “increasingly stringent measures to enforce compliance” on doctors.
By the way, an Atlanta Journal and Constitution Editor says that these people are just racists anyways…. (LINK) Allahpundit asks which ones in these video’s are the secret klansmen…. Maybe the newspaper has a list of names?
UPDATE – By the way look who is funding the paid union and ACORN rent-a-mobs:
In another sign of the urgency gripping the pro-health care reform camp, billionaire George Soros has pledged to sink $5 million into the fight, the group getting the money confirmed.
Soros — whose operation carefully guards the privacy of such donations — made the pledge to Health Care For America Now, the leading coalition of pro-reform groups, unions and providers, HCAN chief Richard Kirsch confirmed in an email
As we reported earlier today, Hotair is also reporting that the pharmecuiticals reached a deal with obama to fix drug prices under national health care to secure their profits. Price fixing is illegal if you or I do it.
Instead Democrats are meeting with lobbyists with millions in funds to spread around and leftist economist and former clinton official Robert Reiche is sick of it LINK.
Sooner or later, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s critics are going to realize that, while her style of speaking drives them up the wall, they are spectacularly imprudent to assume she doesn’t know what she is talking about. Consider the reactions of two prominent law school professors to this statement posted by Palin on her Facebook page:
“The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
Palin’s reference to Obama’s “death panel” inspired Prof. Harold Pollack to pen the following “have you no decency” witticism on The New Republic’s health care blog:
“To be clear, it is downright evil to establish a ‘death panel’ that decides who is allowed to live based on their “level of productivity in society.” Less clear is what the heck Palin or Bachmann are talking about. I can’t find the words “death panel” in any administration position paper, the stimulus package, or the House and Senate draft health reform bills. Don’t take my word for it. Read the bills.”
Of course, Pollack, who is a University of Chicago professor of social service administration, could as easily have said that there could not been any genocide in the Soviet Union, China or Cambodia because Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot never used the term “death camp” in any official communication, either.
But another professor’s reaction to Palin’s statement demonstrates that Pollack’s snark was too cute by half. According to Cornell University law school’s William Jacobson, writing for the Legal Insurrection blog:
“These critics, however, didn’t take the time to find out to what Palin was referring when she used the term ‘level of productivity in society’ as being the basis for determining access to medical care. If the critics, who hold themselves in the highest of intellectual esteem, had bothered to do something other than react, they would have realized that the approach to health care to which Palin was referring was none other than that espoused by key Obama health care adviser Dr. Ezekial Emanuel (brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel).”
Prof. Jacobson explains that:
“The article in which Dr. Emanuel puts forth his approach is ‘Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions,’ published on January 31, 2009 …. While Emanuel does not use the term ‘death panel,’ Palin put that term in quotation marks to signify the concept of medical decisions based on the perceived societal worth of an individual, not literally a ‘death panel.’ And in so doing, Palin was true to Dr. Emanuel’s concept of a system which considers prognosis, since its aim is to achieve complete lives. A young person with a poor prognosis has had a few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life.
“‘Considering prognosis forestalls the concern the disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognoses. When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable … When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.’
“Put together the concepts of prognosis and age, and Dr. Emanuel’s proposal reasonably could be construed as advocating the withholding of some level of medical treatment (probably not basic care, but likely expensive advanced care) to a baby born with Down Syndrome. You may not like this implication, but it is Dr. Emanuel’s implication not Palin’s.”
Put another, less charitable way than Professor Jacobson chose, the analyses of Palin critics would be more likely to be taken seriously if they displayed at least a modicum of intellectual honesty.
UPDATE – Michelle Malkin: Death panels? What death panels? Oh you mean THOSE death panels… LINK (Michelle is on a roll lately :-)
[Editor's Note - The far left blogosphere and news are trying to defend Emmanuel's statements and are trying to say anything to "refute" what is presented here by Gov. Palin and Prof. Jacobson.
The left has several factual problems that amount to arguing that the sky is not blue.
For starters, Obama says that old people should take the pill instead of have the surgery on the ABC News Special. Add to this that Cass Sunstien and John Holdren, two other presidential advisors are on the record and in writing about a policy that can fairly be described as a "death panel" type of rationing.
In essence, case that the far left is trying to make boiled down to this; by adding a trillion dollar bureaucracy between you and your doctor will save money...
1. And will save that money in spite of the fact that they say they will add 50 million people to the health care rolls,
2. And we will save money when another 83 million from people who's employers will dump their insurance plan and move their employees to the public option,
3. And we wills till save money when we add all those with pre-existing conditions,
4. And we will save that money with that bureaucracy making absolutely NO rationing choices at all about the old or young, or limit your private health choices in any way (in spite of what is on page 16 LINK 1, 2, 3) .... AND while making sure that wait times for care will not increase as in the cases of Canada and Britain.
5. And we will do it while not passing any meaningful tort (bogus lawsuit) reform.
Give me a break]
UPDATE II: Newt Gingrich on why Palin is right about the “Death panels” Newt gives more details in his new column titled “Shut Up & Trust the Government”.
[Note from IUSB Vision Editor Chuck Norton - George Stephanapolous is correct that the words "death panel" are not in the bill, but Stephanapolous has been around a while and knows full well that he is being disingenuous. The bill sets up 45 bureaucracies that will judge whether you get treatment or not based on "communal standards" and cost benefit analysis that they have free reign to set up under whose value system?. What mathematical formula tells a bureaucrat to put a pacemaker in an 84 year old grandparent? How can you say that "death panels" aren't a vitally descriptive term for what is going on when people who have advocated population control/euthanasia are so deeply involved in this process?
Who will be getting these bureaucracy jobs??... wonks, political appointees and cronies; groups of people who have an annoying habit of being frightening extreemists just like Cass Sunstien, Dr. Emmanuel and John Holdren who are all advising President Obama.
Why should 45 government bureaucracies be getting between you and your doctor anyways? Is anyone to believe that these bureaucrats and panels will just be handing out advice and nothing will be mandatory???....if so, what would they know that you and your doctor do not know about your treatment and how will all that bureaucracy make health care cheaper?]
“Protest is patriotic!” ”Dissent is the highest form of patriotism!”
These battle-cries were heard often, in a simpler America of long ago — that is, before last November. Back then, protests — even if they were organized by the usual leftist apparatchik-groups like ANSWER or ACORN — were seen – at least in the media – as proof of popular discontent.
When handfuls of Code Pink ladies disrupted congressional hearings or speeches by Bush
administration officials, it was taken as evidence that the administration’s policies were unpopular, and that the thinking parts of the populace were rising up in true democratic fashion.
Even disruptive tactics aimed at blocking President Bush’s Social Security reform program were merely seen as evidence of boisterous high spirits and robust, wide-open debate. On May 23, 2005, the Savannah Morning News reported:
“By now, Jack Kingston is used to shouted questions, interruptions and boos. Republican congressmen expect such responses these days when they meet with constituents about President Bush’s proposal to overhaul Social Security.
“Tinkering with the system is always controversial. To make Bush’s plan even more so — political foes are sending people to Social Security forums armed with hostile questions.
By now, Kingston, a Savannah lawmaker and part of the GOP House leadership, has held 10 such sessions and plans at least seven more.”
On March 16, USA Today reported that Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum “was among dozens of members of Congress who ran gantlets of demonstrators and shouted over hecklers at Social Security events last month. Many who showed up to protest were alerted by e-mails and bused in by anti-Bush organizations such as MoveOn.org and USAction, a liberal advocacy group. They came with prepared questions and instructions on how to confront lawmakers.” This was just good, boisterous politics: “Robust, wide-open debate.” But when it happens to Democrats, it’s something different: A threat to democracy, a sign of incipient fascism, and an opportunity to set up a (possibly illegal) White House “snitch line” where people are encouraged to report “fishy” statements to the authorities.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the “Tea Party” protesters Nazis, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman –forgetting the events above — claims that left-leaning groups never engaged in disruptive tactics against Social Security reform, and various other administration-supporting pundits are trying to spin the whole thing as a deadly move toward “mob rule” and – somewhat contradictorily — as a phony “astroturf” movement.
Remember: When lefties do it, it’s called “community organizing.” When conservatives and libertarians do it, it’s “astroturf.” But some people are noticing the truth. As Mickey Kaus notes, “If an ‘astroturfing’ campaign gets real people to show up at events stating their real views, isn’t it … community organizing?” Why yes, yes it is.
As someone who’s been following the Tea Party campaign since the beginning, it seems to me to be the most genuine outbreak of grassroots popular involvement in my lifetime. People have been turning out, in the tens of thousands at times, because they feel that Obama pulled a bait-and-switch and is moving the country much farther to the left than he promised during the campaign.
More significantly, most of these people are turning out to protest for the first time in their lives, and they’re planning for future political involvement in years to come. Perhaps that’s what’s got the critics worried.
It’s true, of course, that conservative and libertarian organizations — ranging from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions to FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity — are getting involved and providing advice and support, just as numerous lefty groups have always done with left-leaning movements.
But, as I noted in an April 15 column in The Wall Street Journal, those groups were playing catch-up to a movement that was already rolling on its own.
The truth is that for my adult lifetime, “protest” has been a kind of Kabuki engaged in by organized groups on the Left with help from the press — as in the recent bus tour of AIG executives that was organized and paid for by an ACORN affiliate and in which the protesters were heavily outnumbered by the media, who nonetheless generally treated it as an “authentic” expression of populist discontent.
Things like that tour led President Obama to warn bankers that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks, one of a number of thuggish statements he’s made along these lines.
Funny how fast the worm — or maybe it’s the pitchfork — has turned. Now that we’re seeing genuine expressions of populist discontent, not put together by establishment packagers on behalf of an Officially Sanctioned Aggrieved Group, we’re suddenly hearing complaints of “mob rule” and demands for civility.
Civility is fine, but those who demand it should show it. The Obama administration — and its corps of willing supporters in the press and the punditry — has set the tone, and they are now in a poor position to complain.
Whether they like it or not — and the evidence increasingly tends toward “not” — President Obama and his handlers need to accept that this is a free country, one where expressions of popular discontent take place outside the electoral process, and always have. (Remember Martin Luther King?)
What historians like Gordon Wood and Pauline Maier call “out-of-doors political activity” is an old American tradition, and in the past things have been far more “boisterous” than they are today.
Rather than demonizing today’s protesters, perhaps they might want to reflect on how flimflams and thuggishness have managed to squander Obama’s political capital in a few short months, and ponder what they might do to regain the trust of the millions of Americans who are no longer inclined to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt.
Dr. Reynolds is a professor of law and the University of Tennessee and is the famed writer often referred to as “The Instapundit”
Of course the Dems are in their back pocket, whole demonizing those same companies in an effort to fool you.
Michelle Malkin has all of the money details right HERE.
Be sure to see our section on CORPORATISM to examine how Wall Street, the banks, Goldman Sachs, and others playing the pay offs and kick back games with the Democrats at what are unprecedented levels in my life time.
UPDATE – The deal is discussed on the Senate floor and we have the video via National Review:
I’ll tell you — if someone negotiated a deal with me and I agreed to put up say, 80 dollars or 80 million dollars or 80 billion dollars and then you came back and said to me a couple of weeks later — no no, I know you agreed to do 80 billion and I know you were willing to help support through an advertising campaign this particular — not even this particular bill, just the idea of generic health care reform? No, we’re going to double — we’re going to double what you agreed in those negotiations to do. That’s not the way — that’s not what I consider treating people the way I’d want to be treated.
UPDATE II – By the way, look who is behind the big insurance protests LINK. Michelle Malkin has the story and the proof. Now this is adventures in astroturfing.
Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-MA) manages to answer the question that Keith Ellison (D-MN) and the rest of her Obama-care supporting colleagues in both the House and Senate have avoided. The crowd, however, didn’t like the response very much, and lets Tsongas know it. At about the four-minute mark, one of Tsongas’ peons constitutents asks Tsongas whether she will commit to adopting ObamaCare for her own coverage and give up her so-called “Cadillac” or “gold-played” Congressional coverage, and that’s when Tsongas suddenly becomes concerned with protecting choice:
[4 minutes in and again at 6:50 in. You can watch Rep. Tsongas is lie about the choices people will have to change insurance because page 16 of the House Bill restricts the private or employer based care that you can change to we we discussed HERE. Tsongas then goes on to talk about the Health Care Exchange, but doesnt tell her constituent that the permanent health care exchange is a part of the Republican alternative plan, not the one on page 16 of the House Bill.
Tsongas also doesn't tell her constituent that she will have to pay taxes for the "public option" whether she uses it or not. Like the public school "option" you have to pay for private school tuition on top of public school property taxes which makes the private option twice as expensive and twice as less desirable, even though it may give quality that is twice as good. By economic forc e it is designed to limite your choices if you are poor or middle class. - Editor]
Transcript:
CONSTITUENT: My question to you, Congresswoman Tsongas, is that if this is such a great plan, why did you opt out of it when you took the vote [loud applause, standing ovation]?
TSONGAS: People often say why don’t the American people have what those of us in Congress have. [Audience erupts] Let me explain what I have. Let me explain what I have. What I have is a tremendous array — you know, last year when I went to a discussion — what I have is a tremendous array of choices. And I made a choice based on what I was willing to pay for and what made sense in terms of coverage for me and my family. [Audience shouts out: "We want choice! We want choice!] This is essentially what we are creating for the American people. We are creating greater choice.
[Smattering of applause overwhelmed by boos.]
Malklin continues and links to CNN/Fortune magazine’s article that tells of the 5 freedoms you will lose under Obamacare:
The imperious “Do as I say, not as I do” ways of Washington cannot be packaged as choice-enhancing, no matter how hard Rep. Tsongas tries. Refresher from 5 key freedoms you’ll lose under Obamacare:
In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage — including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money — but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can’t have. It’s a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
She said so in USA Today so follow the link and see for yourself. This is after for eight years Democrats lectured us on how “patriotic” it was to invest in undermining the war effort. ….before a leftist even says it… just mere dissent my foot…. you guys tried to undermine the war effort and you well know it.
Aside from Sarah Palin, Democrats have declared the lovely and highly effective Michelle Bachmann for a million dollar smear campaign for the 2010 election cycle. She refuses to even meet with most lobbyists and she has always been a corruption fighter which makes her popular in her district. Bachmann is a well spoken mother of five, who is also stunningly good looking. Democrats fear that she can make a go for higher national office.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann is outspoken, conservative, media-friendly — and for many in the Democratic Party, a new public enemy No. 1.
Now that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is out of office, there are few Republican officials in the country Democrats would rather unseat in 2010 than Bachmann, a two-term congresswoman with a habit of pushing the buttons of liberals on everything from ACORN to global warming to even whether President Barack Obama is, as she once asked, “anti-American.”
“She’s definitely somewhere up there,” Bachmann chief of staff Michelle Martson said of where the Minnesota congresswoman sits on the Democratic campaign hit-list.
Bachmann has long been on the receiving end of pointed jabs on liberal blogs like Daily Kos, where one commenter wrote a few weeks back, “After having just returned from a trip to Minnesota, I shake my head that such a beautiful place would be represented by such an ugly individual as Bachmann.”
Ask Democratic officials in the state about Bachmann, and they can barely contain their anger.
They will not engage her on real matters of substance because she is simply too effective and too common sense. In the last campaign they called her names, edited quotes out of context to misrepresent them and simply lied about her, but Minnesota voters weren’t having it and returned her to the House for another term.
Bachmann in action on common sense energy policy which Democrats have always opposed:
Bachmann on “Gangster Government”:
She is one of the few politicians who simply tells the truth.
UPDATE III – Cornell Law Professor: Palin is right about “Death Panels” for Obamacare – LINK.
His name is Dr. Ezekeil Emmanuel. He is the health care advisor to President Obamna and is the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.
Cass Sunstien is another presidential advisor who has written the same thing.
Watch this video…
UPDATE I –
Crystal Lake Health Care Panel: White House to AARP “Your at the table or your on the menu”
“Half of health care dollars are spent at the last years of your life, so they plan to save dollars by not spending that money.”
UPDATE II – Former Clinton Advisor Dick Morris: “The demonstrators are right, I have read the bill & it means the end of medicare. For the elderly, this is a matter of life and death, literally.”
UPDATE IV – Independence Institute video on how special interests destroyed Oregon state run health care:
UPDATE V – Betsy McCaughey with Senator Fred Thompson, ”It will hit the elderly the most”:
House Orders Up Three Elite Jets
August 5, 2009
By Paul Singer
Roll Call Staff
Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.
But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.
The Air Force had asked for one Gulfstream 550 jet (price tag: about $65 million) as part of an ongoing upgrade of its passenger air service.
But the House Appropriations Committee, at its own initiative, added to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill another $132 million for two more airplanes and specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials.
Because the Appropriations Committee viewed the additional aircraft as an expansion of an existing Defense Department program, it did not treat the money for two more planes as an earmark, and the legislation does not disclose which Member had requested the additional money.
VIDEO: SEIU Union Thugs Attack Black Conservative Protestor. Police Arrest Them.
[Notice the two guys in SEIU shirts with the "pro health care" message on front - Editor]
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Kenneth Gladney, 38, a conservative activist from St. Louis, said he was attacked by some of those arrested as he handed out yellow flags with “Don’t tread on me” printed on them.
He spoke to the Post-Dispatch from the emergency room at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, where he said he was awaiting treatment for injuries to his knee, back, elbow, shoulder and face. Gladney, who is black, said one of his attackers, also a black man, used a racial slur against him before the attack.
Mini-UPDATE: Gladney and his attorney were on the Neil Cavuto Show. The three men and the large woman in SEIU t-shirts all kicked and hit Gladney. Gladney is taking legal action against the SEIU and the four individuals identified.
UPDATE: – Michelle Malkin has more news and video links of more union thuggery at town halls – LINK. Good work Michelle!
UPDATE II: SEIU Front Group Talking Points for Town Halls (Hat Tip NY Joe):
There it is, do not speak to people about actual policy points, interupt, yell and chant mindless slogans. Is that the Democrats looking out for you??
UPDATE III: Greta Van Susteren mocks the claim by the DNC that these old folks showing up are all paid by someone to be there. On the other hand ACORN and SEIU people ARE indeed paid for their activities.
UPDATE IV: Man who initiated attack on ken Gladney in the video above is an SEIU member named Elston McCowen
But where were they when Vanity Fair published this??
And before you say /insert whiney lefty voice “See See! What about that Obama as the Joker sign! See how racist that is!“. I know that most of you leftists didn’t see the Batman movie, but ummmm the Joker is a white guy.
So why make Obama as the Joker? I am so glad you asked. Do you remember when The Joker went into a monologue about how his goal was to overwhelm the city with chaos to bring it down?
The Obama Campaign tactical playbook is actually a real book by Saul Alinsky called “Rules for Radicals” which, among other things, advocates overwhelming the American system with debt, impossible government regulations and chaos with the express purpose of making it crash and blame the crash on capitalism & freedom; thus entering in true socialism and central government control.
You see, in order you understand that you have to be smart enough to grasp complex intellectual concepts like “satire” and “literary association” of which, the left hasn’t been to good at lately.
Keith Ellison (D- MN) is the guy with the microphone, not answering questions but rather just playing MC…
Ed Morrissey comments: The reaction in this clip is almost universally negative, and downright hostile. When one man reads a prepared question asking Ellison whether he’d put forego his “Cadillac plan” as a Congressman and put his family on ObamaCare, Ellison plays emcee rather than answer it — and another constituent loudly demands his response.
By the way, the elite media used to love covering protests and raucous political action, but I guess they only do that when Republicans hold office….
Special thanks to Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com for the video links!
This country deserves a respectful, honest debate about health care. And the hundreds of townhalls Members of Congress will be hosting across the country this August are just the place for that conversation to happen. Here are just five questions Americans should be pressing their elected leaders on over the coming month:
Can you promise me that I will not lose my current plan and doctor? [and can you promise that a new health care law can never be construed to push me into the public option when I go to change insurance - Editor]
Can you promise that you and your family will enroll in the public plan?
Members of Congress and their families currently receive health care through the popular, and completely public-option-free, Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) which allows members of Congress to choose between 283 private health insurance plans. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposed an amendment that would require all members of Congress and their staffs to enroll in the newly-created public health insurance plan. His amendment passed by just one vote in the Senate Health Committee. In the House, Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) offered a similar amendment and all 21 Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee voted it down. If the public plan is so great, then Members of Congress should be willing to forfeit their private coverage and join the millions of Americans who would be moved into the public plan.
Can you promise that Obamacare will not lead to higher deficits in the long term?
President Obama said that he would not support health care legislation that would add to the national deficit. But Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf has stated that the House health care legislation would “generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.” To help Obama keep his promise, Rep. Patrick Tiberi (R-OH) offered an amendment that would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to submit an annual report to the President and Congress, comparing the expected revenue and spending under the bill’s provisions for the upcoming 10-year period. In the event that projected spending under the bill outpaced revenue, the Secretary would have to reduce spending so that it would not exceed revenue. Democrats defeated Tiberi’s amendment.
Can you promise that government bureaucrats will not ration health care for patients on the public plan?
President Obama promised on July 22 that health care reform would keep the government out of health care decisions, but both the House and Senate bills call for an increased role of comparative effectiveness research (CER). More information on health care effectiveness is good, as long as doctors and patients are the ones empowered to use that information. Conservatives in both the House and Senate offered amendments prohibiting the use of CER by government to mandate, deny, or ration care. These anti-rationing amendments were defeated in both the House and Senate.
Can you promise me that my tax dollars will not fund abortions?
The House bill, as currently drafted, allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to outline the minimum benefits that must be included in any health plan. There is no specific provision in the bill that would require insurance coverage of abortion. However, since the decisions over benefits are left to the Secretary of HHS, with recommendations from a newly created Health Care Benefits Advisory Committee, there is nothing to prevent the current or future Secretary from including abortion coverage in Americans’ health insurance. Conservatives in both the House and Senate offered amendments that would prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. The taxpayer funded abortion bans were defeated in both the House and Senate.
IUSB Vision Editor Chuck Norton asks:
Can you promise that the number of doctors and nurses will not dwindle over time because of the lowered rates that they would be paid under a government plan?
Medicare pays doctors 71% of what private health insurers pay and pays hospitals 81%. Many doctors have to limit the number of Medicare patients to that their paying customers can make up the difference. A large number of Canadian trained doctors have fled to the United States. Less pay means less people getting in the business.
Can you promise that we will not see extended wait lists like we do in Canada and Britain in light of the fact that :
If the number of doctors and nurses gets lower because they are paid less, how can we add 30 million uninsured, including 12 million illegal immigrants, and then add (as some studies indicate) 83 million more people to the rolls, because of the employers who will cancel their private health insurance plan for the taxpayer subsidized model, and still recieve timely care?
How can you claim to be serious about health care reform when the trial lawyers lobby has convinced most Democratic members of Congress to abandon any meaningful lawsuit reform for these bogus lawsuits?
UPDATE II: Will I have to pay for the “public option” plan if I chose not to use it and keep my private plan?
According to the House version of the bill you will have to pay taxes for the “public option” whether you use it or not. Like the public school “option” you have to pay for private school tuition on top of public school property taxes which makes the private option twice as expensive and twice as less desirable, even though private often gives quality that is twice as good. By economic force it is designed to limit your choices if you are middle class.
Will you go on the record and promise right now that no new health care bill in Congress could be construed as to allow any government official to prevent my doctor from giving me the treatment he thinks I or my parents will need?
Hudson Senior Fellow and former Lt. Governor of new York Betsy McCaughey on CNN reported (LINK): The House bill empowers the Health & Human Services Secretery to use “increasingly stringent measures to enforce compliance” on doctors.
UPDATE: Dennis Prager has his 10 questions about ObamaCare (LINK).
UPDATE III: Hotair.com posts details of sections 122-124 of the House Bill with key questions – LINK.
UPDATE IV – SOLUTIONS ?? How about we just add language to the bills saying that, for example : Section XXXX shall never be construed as to force doctors to make certain decisions that the doctor and patient feel are not in their best interests. Or XXX section shall never be construed to use any form of cost/benefit analysis to avoid paying for or authorizing benefits to anyone based on age, mental status, weight, disease etc etc…. OR perhaps a section banning payments for any form of convenience abortion or euthanasia….. but they aren’t offering that as a solution are they? – But here is the dirty little secret, Republicans had tried to get such language inserted and the Democrats faught it tooth and nail – LINK.
The Labour Party in Britain is the one in power and is running their National Health Service. It is unionized and totally in bed with the Labour Party. British National health Service (NHS) in action.
The problem with nationalized health care is the same problem with the public schools, schools claim to be student focused but they are not (the test scores prove it). Usually the school employees are either government union employees and far left administrators who run the school as if its purpose is to perpetuate the union and the administration bureaucracy. If they cared about students they would love school voucher programs because of their success rate with kids, but they oppose them because it takes money away from the unions. Public health care would be about the trillion dollar bureaucracy and preserving it. It would not be patient centered at all and this is yet another example of the truth. In Britain the National Health Service employs 1.4 million people and that amounts to a direct transfer of wealth from the tax payer to the employees union who in turn gives money to the Labour Party.
Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.
The Government’s drug rationing watchdog says “therapeutic” injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.
Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.
Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.
The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.
But the British Pain Society, which represents specialists in the field, has written to NICE calling for the guidelines to be withdrawn after its members warned that they would lead to many patients having to undergo unnecessary and high-risk spinal surgery.
Dr Christopher Wells, a leading specialist in pain relief medicine and the founder of the NHS’ first specialist pain clinic, said it was “entirely unacceptable” that conventional treatments used by thousands of patients would be stopped.
“I don’t mind whether some people want to try acupuncture, or osteopathy. What concerns me is that to pay for these treatments, specialist clinics which offer vital services are going to be forced to close, leaving patients in significant pain, with nowhere to go,”.
President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan is having little effect on job creation within the general-construction industry, the trade association for the sector said Thursday.
Construction spending was “disappointingly slow” five months into the recovery program, with firms working on stimulus-funded construction projects hiring at no greater rates than those without such work, according to the Associated General Contractors of America, known as AGC.
The findings are based on a survey of almost 1,000 construction companies.
Polling has shown that confidence is dropping in the measure’s ability to reverse the economic decline, and its success or failure could become a central plank in the 2010 midterm elections.
While few new jobs were reported, 60 percent of firms surveyed by the AGC said they had saved jobs because of the stimulus package, which the AGC estimates is worth $135 billion in construction contracts. “We’ve been able to keep a lot of our employees in Arizona and New Mexico,” Deena Billings, senior vice president with FNF construction, an AGC member, said Thursday.
AGC chief executive Stephen E. Sandherr said that the stimulus act is having an impact but not delivering on its full potential. “With construction unemployment at almost double the national rate, it is disappointing to see so many stimulus programs getting off to such a slow start,” he said.
The transportation sector has seen stimulus money flow into road, rail and seaport projects, partly because states already had identified “shovel-ready” contracts. But only a few general-construction projects have been funded under the stimulus act, the AGC said.
At the time of the survey, the Army Corps of Engineers had paid out only $84 million of $4.6 billion granted it under the stimulus, the AGC said. The General Services Administration, given $5.9 billion, had paid out only $12 million.
