Showing posts with label Obama Health Care Plan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama Health Care Plan. Show all posts
Friday, August 20, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Obama's recess appointment reignites debate over healthcare
President Barack Obama's recess appointment of Donald Berwick to lead Medicare was intended to avoid another high-profile congressional fight over healthcare reform. Instead, it’s renewed — at least temporarily — the well-worn partisan debate over the government's role in medicine.
READ ON:
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/107593-obama-recess-appointment-reignites-debate-over-healthcare-reform
READ ON:
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/107593-obama-recess-appointment-reignites-debate-over-healthcare-reform
MORNING BELL: This is What is Ahead for Americans in Healthcare!
The Rationer-in-Chief
When Linda O’Boyle was diagnosed with bowel cancer, her doctors told her she could boost her chances of survival by adding the drug cetuximab to her regimen. But the rationing body for Britain’s National Health Service, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), had previously ruled that the drug was not cost-effective and therefore would not be paid for by the government. So O’Boyle liquidated her savings and paid for the drug herself. But this is not allowed under NHS rules. When government bureaucrats found out that O’Boyle had purchased the drug with her own money, she was denied NHS treatment and died within months.
Defenders of Britain’s health care rationing system may try to claim that this tragic death is an outlier in an otherwise acceptable government run health care system. They are wrong. It is the point of the system. As socialized medicine and infanticide advocate Peter Singer has argued in The New York Times, the NICE bureaucrats must ration care or else free government health care would bankrupt the British economy. “NICE had set a general limit of £30,000, or about $49,000, on the cost of extending life for a year,” Singer writes. Following this logic, Singer supported NICE’s decision not to allow British citizens the kidney cancer fighting drug Sutent. As a result of this, and many other rationing decisions Britain, has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in the Western world. While 60.3% of men and 61.7% of women in Sweden survive a cancer diagnosis, in Britain the figure ranges between 40.2% to 48.1% for men and 48% to 54.1% for women. And NICE’s rationing has not just hit cancer patients. Doctors have warned that patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under the NHS rationing scheme. And according to the Patients Association, one million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain.
Most Americans would find this harrowing. But not President Barack Obama. Yesterday he bypassed the Senate confirmation process and used a recess appointment to install Dr. Donald Berwick to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS is the agency that runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs). Dr. Berwick said of Britain’s health care system: “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it.” And his love for Britain’s health care system is not in spite of its rationing, but because of it. In 2009 Dr. Berwick told Biotechnology Healthcare: “NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious and valuable knowledge-building system. … The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
The fact that the White House chose to empower Dr. Berwick by recess appointment is particularly audacious. The recess appointment power was intended to be used for occasions when the Senate is out for months at a time. The Senate is currently out of session for just 11 days. Worse, the Senate majority has never even scheduled a hearing so that Dr. Berwick’s rationing views could be given an “open” forum. In fact, Dr. Berwick has not even returned Senators’ written questionnaires. The White House defends the move by claiming “there’s no time to waste with Washington game-playing.” But then why did the Obama administration wait until April 2010, a full 15 months after President Obama was sworn into office, to nominate Dr. Berwick? Is it because they did not want Dr. Berwick’s well known and public support for rationing health care to affect the debate over Obamacare?
In a 2005 interview with Health Affairs, Dr. Berwick said: “(G)overnment is an extraordinarily important player in the American health care scene, and it has inescapable duties with respect to improvement of care, or we’re not going to get improved care. Government remains a major purchaser. … So as CMS goes and as Medicaid goes, so goes the system.” And that was before Obamacare gave far reaching new powers to government bureaucrats.
In June of 2009, President Obama told the American Medical Association that “identifying what works is not about dictating what kind of care should be provided.” Moreover, the president has assured the public time and again that the government will not get between patients and their doctors. His nomination of Don Berwick for Director of CMS, however, tells a different story.
Quick Hits:
•Arizona Democrats who have to face voters this year are lining up against the Obama administration’s suit aimed at stopping states new immigration enforcement law.
•According to a new study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year.
•According to Gallup a majority of Americans believe the government’s main focus should be on halting the flow of illegal immigrants coming into the U.S., not developing a plan to deal with those already here.
•The Obama EPA proposed new regulations for coal-burning power plants yesterday that would cost consumers nearly $3 billion a year.
•Also according to Gallup, only 38% of independents approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, the first time independent approval of Obama has dropped below 40%.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/07/morning-bell-the-rationer-in-chief/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
When Linda O’Boyle was diagnosed with bowel cancer, her doctors told her she could boost her chances of survival by adding the drug cetuximab to her regimen. But the rationing body for Britain’s National Health Service, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), had previously ruled that the drug was not cost-effective and therefore would not be paid for by the government. So O’Boyle liquidated her savings and paid for the drug herself. But this is not allowed under NHS rules. When government bureaucrats found out that O’Boyle had purchased the drug with her own money, she was denied NHS treatment and died within months.
Defenders of Britain’s health care rationing system may try to claim that this tragic death is an outlier in an otherwise acceptable government run health care system. They are wrong. It is the point of the system. As socialized medicine and infanticide advocate Peter Singer has argued in The New York Times, the NICE bureaucrats must ration care or else free government health care would bankrupt the British economy. “NICE had set a general limit of £30,000, or about $49,000, on the cost of extending life for a year,” Singer writes. Following this logic, Singer supported NICE’s decision not to allow British citizens the kidney cancer fighting drug Sutent. As a result of this, and many other rationing decisions Britain, has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in the Western world. While 60.3% of men and 61.7% of women in Sweden survive a cancer diagnosis, in Britain the figure ranges between 40.2% to 48.1% for men and 48% to 54.1% for women. And NICE’s rationing has not just hit cancer patients. Doctors have warned that patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under the NHS rationing scheme. And according to the Patients Association, one million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain.
Most Americans would find this harrowing. But not President Barack Obama. Yesterday he bypassed the Senate confirmation process and used a recess appointment to install Dr. Donald Berwick to be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS is the agency that runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs). Dr. Berwick said of Britain’s health care system: “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it.” And his love for Britain’s health care system is not in spite of its rationing, but because of it. In 2009 Dr. Berwick told Biotechnology Healthcare: “NICE is extremely effective and a conscientious and valuable knowledge-building system. … The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
The fact that the White House chose to empower Dr. Berwick by recess appointment is particularly audacious. The recess appointment power was intended to be used for occasions when the Senate is out for months at a time. The Senate is currently out of session for just 11 days. Worse, the Senate majority has never even scheduled a hearing so that Dr. Berwick’s rationing views could be given an “open” forum. In fact, Dr. Berwick has not even returned Senators’ written questionnaires. The White House defends the move by claiming “there’s no time to waste with Washington game-playing.” But then why did the Obama administration wait until April 2010, a full 15 months after President Obama was sworn into office, to nominate Dr. Berwick? Is it because they did not want Dr. Berwick’s well known and public support for rationing health care to affect the debate over Obamacare?
In a 2005 interview with Health Affairs, Dr. Berwick said: “(G)overnment is an extraordinarily important player in the American health care scene, and it has inescapable duties with respect to improvement of care, or we’re not going to get improved care. Government remains a major purchaser. … So as CMS goes and as Medicaid goes, so goes the system.” And that was before Obamacare gave far reaching new powers to government bureaucrats.
In June of 2009, President Obama told the American Medical Association that “identifying what works is not about dictating what kind of care should be provided.” Moreover, the president has assured the public time and again that the government will not get between patients and their doctors. His nomination of Don Berwick for Director of CMS, however, tells a different story.
Quick Hits:
•Arizona Democrats who have to face voters this year are lining up against the Obama administration’s suit aimed at stopping states new immigration enforcement law.
•According to a new study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year.
•According to Gallup a majority of Americans believe the government’s main focus should be on halting the flow of illegal immigrants coming into the U.S., not developing a plan to deal with those already here.
•The Obama EPA proposed new regulations for coal-burning power plants yesterday that would cost consumers nearly $3 billion a year.
•Also according to Gallup, only 38% of independents approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, the first time independent approval of Obama has dropped below 40%.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/07/morning-bell-the-rationer-in-chief/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Monday, July 5, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Virginia Challenges Feds in First Health Care Lawsuit Hearing
FOX NEWS, July 1, 2010
The Obama administration is trying to have its cake and eat it too by arguing that the federal government is not taxing people to pay for health care, but then says state must comply with the new law because they can't avoid paying taxes, Virginia's attorney general's office argued in federal court Thursday.
In a hearing to determine whether Virginia has the standing to go forward with it lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ian Gershengorn argued for the federal government that the Commonwealth of Virginia did not have the right to ignore the federal law because of the minimum coverage standard provision.
In brief, the provision says that if people don't buy health care insurance they must pay a fine. Gershengorn argued that the provision is a tax, which states can not ignore.
But Duncan Getchell, Virginia's solicitor general, argued that Congress was very careful not to classify any fees or penalties as taxes in the bill because President Obama opposed taxes on the middle class.
Getchell argued that the language in the law refers to the fine imposed for not obtaining health insurance as a penalty, which means it can not be classified as a tax.
The definition of a tax under the Commerce Clause is used to raise real revenue for the general purpose of the government. If the "penalty" works to get people to comply with the law, then it won't raise a dime, and therefore can not be considered a tax, the state argued.
"Congress called it a penalty in the bill, that is the word they used. Now mind you, this bill had taxes in it, when the judge asked the United States today is this a tax bill or is this a health care bill the answer was, it is both. That's very interesting given the insistence on part of the Legislature and the president prior to this bill that this is not a tax and not the position of the federal government is in face that this is a tax bill," Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told reporters Thursday morning after arguments.
Making a separate argument, the federal government said the actual activity is uninsured citizens using the health care system without paying for it. Gershengorn said to keep health care from imploding the economy, they must regulate what could be classified as freeloading activity.
Getchell countered that the decision to not buy insurance is not "activity," and the federal government can't draft a regular citizen into commerce in order to regulate him or her.
"If not engaging in commerce is commerce there are no limits on federal power," Cuccinelli said.
The federal government argued that Virginia does not have standing to make its claims.
"Virginia cannot bring this suit against the federal government on the theory that the minimum coverage provision will burden or otherwise injure Virginia's citizens," the feds said in its brief to the court.
"Virginia claims standing on behalf of its citizens to challenge federal legislation, but citizens of Virginia are also citizens of the United States. The Commonwealth does not have standing to sue the federal government to exempt Virginians from the operation of federal law," the brief reads.
Judge Henry Hudson heard the arguments and has 30 days to release his written decision.
If he allows the suit to go forward in the next 30 days, than the case will be heard in October, and after those arguments, he will have another 30 days to make his ruling.
It's entirely likely that whichever side loses the case will appeal the case to the 4th Circuit Court, and then whoever loses there will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, most pieces of legislation brought before Congress have a severability clause, which means if a portion of it is deemed unconstitutional than the rest of the bill can still stand. The health care law does not have this, which means if Virginia's lawsuit prevails at the highest levels, the entire law will go down.
Fox News' Gretchen Gailey contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/01/virginia-challenges-feds-health-care-lawsuit-hearing/
The Obama administration is trying to have its cake and eat it too by arguing that the federal government is not taxing people to pay for health care, but then says state must comply with the new law because they can't avoid paying taxes, Virginia's attorney general's office argued in federal court Thursday.
In a hearing to determine whether Virginia has the standing to go forward with it lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ian Gershengorn argued for the federal government that the Commonwealth of Virginia did not have the right to ignore the federal law because of the minimum coverage standard provision.
In brief, the provision says that if people don't buy health care insurance they must pay a fine. Gershengorn argued that the provision is a tax, which states can not ignore.
But Duncan Getchell, Virginia's solicitor general, argued that Congress was very careful not to classify any fees or penalties as taxes in the bill because President Obama opposed taxes on the middle class.
Getchell argued that the language in the law refers to the fine imposed for not obtaining health insurance as a penalty, which means it can not be classified as a tax.
The definition of a tax under the Commerce Clause is used to raise real revenue for the general purpose of the government. If the "penalty" works to get people to comply with the law, then it won't raise a dime, and therefore can not be considered a tax, the state argued.
"Congress called it a penalty in the bill, that is the word they used. Now mind you, this bill had taxes in it, when the judge asked the United States today is this a tax bill or is this a health care bill the answer was, it is both. That's very interesting given the insistence on part of the Legislature and the president prior to this bill that this is not a tax and not the position of the federal government is in face that this is a tax bill," Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli told reporters Thursday morning after arguments.
Making a separate argument, the federal government said the actual activity is uninsured citizens using the health care system without paying for it. Gershengorn said to keep health care from imploding the economy, they must regulate what could be classified as freeloading activity.
Getchell countered that the decision to not buy insurance is not "activity," and the federal government can't draft a regular citizen into commerce in order to regulate him or her.
"If not engaging in commerce is commerce there are no limits on federal power," Cuccinelli said.
The federal government argued that Virginia does not have standing to make its claims.
"Virginia cannot bring this suit against the federal government on the theory that the minimum coverage provision will burden or otherwise injure Virginia's citizens," the feds said in its brief to the court.
"Virginia claims standing on behalf of its citizens to challenge federal legislation, but citizens of Virginia are also citizens of the United States. The Commonwealth does not have standing to sue the federal government to exempt Virginians from the operation of federal law," the brief reads.
Judge Henry Hudson heard the arguments and has 30 days to release his written decision.
If he allows the suit to go forward in the next 30 days, than the case will be heard in October, and after those arguments, he will have another 30 days to make his ruling.
It's entirely likely that whichever side loses the case will appeal the case to the 4th Circuit Court, and then whoever loses there will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, most pieces of legislation brought before Congress have a severability clause, which means if a portion of it is deemed unconstitutional than the rest of the bill can still stand. The health care law does not have this, which means if Virginia's lawsuit prevails at the highest levels, the entire law will go down.
Fox News' Gretchen Gailey contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/01/virginia-challenges-feds-health-care-lawsuit-hearing/
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Morning Bell: The Limitless Power of the Obama-Kagan Congress
This Sunday, our nation will celebrate Independence Day, which commemorates the Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration preamble reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The fact that we as a nation came together every year to celebrate this document might lead many Americans to believe that a Supreme Court Justice should take the Declaration of Independence into account when they are interpreting the Constitution. Elena Kagan is not one of those Americans. Under questioning from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) yesterday, Kagan admitted: “To be honest with you, I don’t have a view of what are natural rights independent of the Constitution.”
And Kagan’s disturbing indifference to the existence of natural rights is just one of the many frightening revelations her confirmation hearing has produced. On Tuesday, Sen. Coburn pressed Kagan about the limits the Constitution places on Congress’ power to control what Americans do:
Coburn: If I wanted to sponsor a bill and it said Americans, you have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day and I got it through Congress and that’s now the law of the land, got to do it, does that violate the Commerce Clause?
Kagan: Sounds like a dumb law
Coburn: Yeah, but I got one that’s real similar to it that I think is equally dumb. I’m not going to mention which it is.
Kagan: But I think that the question of whether it’s a dumb law is different from whether the question of whether it’s constitutional and I think that courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless just because they’re senseless.
The law Coburn was referring to, of course, was President Barack Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment: the Obamacare provision that forces all Americans to buy health insurance. But Jefferson and the other Constitution framers designed the document to protect our “unalienable Rights” by limiting the power of Congress. They designed an ingenious system of checks and balances that divides state and federal authority in the hope of preventing any one government from exerting too much control over a free people. Specifically, Article I allocates to Congress “[a]ll legislative powers herein granted,” and section 8 of Article I (referred to by Sen. Coburn above as the Commerce Clause), grants Congress the authority “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” The Supreme Court has always understood that, taken together, these clauses put some legislative powers beyond Congress’ reach.
But Kagan has now testified that not only does she find the Founders’ concept of “unalienable Rights” irrelevant to Constitutional interpretation, but she also declined to say if the Constitution prevents Congress from telling Americans what to eat. Her evasive non-response to Coburn’s Commerce Clause inquiry shows that she would indeed be a rubber-stamp for almost any part of the Obama agenda that Congress enacts. So if the Obama administration convinced Congress (and this is a total hypothetical) that the survival of a single car company, let’s say Chrysler, was absolutely necessary for the survival of the nation’s economy, and Congress then passed a law forcing all Americans to buy a Chrysler car, Kagan would find such a law, while perhaps “dumb,” perfectly constitutional. Jefferson must be rolling in his grave.
The leftist members of the Senate Judiciary Committee know that the Obamacare individual mandate is extremely vulnerable to being struck down by the Supreme Court. That is why they have spent so much of the hearing trying to redefine what “judicial activism” is. As Heritage Deputy Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies Robert Alt will testify today, the Court is not committing “judicial activism” every time it finds that a law violates the Constitution. Judicial activism is not a function of outcomes, but one of interpretation. Instead, it occurs when a judge applies his or her own policy preferences to uphold, or strike down, a statute or other government action which is clearly forbidden by the Constitution.
Kagan came to the committee with one of the thinnest records of any Supreme Court nominee in recent history. What little has been learned about her views so far has been highly disturbing. Nothing in her testimony has demonstrated she has either the respect for our nation’s founding documents or the independence from this White House to apply the law as it is written, and dispense justice without regard to the parties before her.
Quick Hits:
•Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) used her time questioning Elena Kagan to ask: “I keep wanting to ask you about the famous camp of Edward vs. Jacob or the vampire vs. the werewolf.”
•According to the CBO, the federal debt will represent 62% of the nation’s economy by the end of this year, the highest percentage since World War II.
•House Democrats have attached $10 billion in spending for government union jobs to the Afghanistan war funding bill.
•U.S. private employers added just 13,000 jobs in June, suggesting expectations of a big drop in the government’s upcoming nonfarm payrolls report were on target.
•A former Justice Department attorney who quit his job to protest the Obama administration’s handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case is accusing Attorney General Eric Holder of dropping the charges for racially motivated reasons.
Reprinted from: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/01/morning-bell-the-limitless-power-of-the-obama-kagan-congress/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
And Kagan’s disturbing indifference to the existence of natural rights is just one of the many frightening revelations her confirmation hearing has produced. On Tuesday, Sen. Coburn pressed Kagan about the limits the Constitution places on Congress’ power to control what Americans do:
Coburn: If I wanted to sponsor a bill and it said Americans, you have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day and I got it through Congress and that’s now the law of the land, got to do it, does that violate the Commerce Clause?
Kagan: Sounds like a dumb law
Coburn: Yeah, but I got one that’s real similar to it that I think is equally dumb. I’m not going to mention which it is.
Kagan: But I think that the question of whether it’s a dumb law is different from whether the question of whether it’s constitutional and I think that courts would be wrong to strike down laws that they think are senseless just because they’re senseless.
The law Coburn was referring to, of course, was President Barack Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment: the Obamacare provision that forces all Americans to buy health insurance. But Jefferson and the other Constitution framers designed the document to protect our “unalienable Rights” by limiting the power of Congress. They designed an ingenious system of checks and balances that divides state and federal authority in the hope of preventing any one government from exerting too much control over a free people. Specifically, Article I allocates to Congress “[a]ll legislative powers herein granted,” and section 8 of Article I (referred to by Sen. Coburn above as the Commerce Clause), grants Congress the authority “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” The Supreme Court has always understood that, taken together, these clauses put some legislative powers beyond Congress’ reach.
But Kagan has now testified that not only does she find the Founders’ concept of “unalienable Rights” irrelevant to Constitutional interpretation, but she also declined to say if the Constitution prevents Congress from telling Americans what to eat. Her evasive non-response to Coburn’s Commerce Clause inquiry shows that she would indeed be a rubber-stamp for almost any part of the Obama agenda that Congress enacts. So if the Obama administration convinced Congress (and this is a total hypothetical) that the survival of a single car company, let’s say Chrysler, was absolutely necessary for the survival of the nation’s economy, and Congress then passed a law forcing all Americans to buy a Chrysler car, Kagan would find such a law, while perhaps “dumb,” perfectly constitutional. Jefferson must be rolling in his grave.
The leftist members of the Senate Judiciary Committee know that the Obamacare individual mandate is extremely vulnerable to being struck down by the Supreme Court. That is why they have spent so much of the hearing trying to redefine what “judicial activism” is. As Heritage Deputy Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies Robert Alt will testify today, the Court is not committing “judicial activism” every time it finds that a law violates the Constitution. Judicial activism is not a function of outcomes, but one of interpretation. Instead, it occurs when a judge applies his or her own policy preferences to uphold, or strike down, a statute or other government action which is clearly forbidden by the Constitution.
Kagan came to the committee with one of the thinnest records of any Supreme Court nominee in recent history. What little has been learned about her views so far has been highly disturbing. Nothing in her testimony has demonstrated she has either the respect for our nation’s founding documents or the independence from this White House to apply the law as it is written, and dispense justice without regard to the parties before her.
Quick Hits:
•Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) used her time questioning Elena Kagan to ask: “I keep wanting to ask you about the famous camp of Edward vs. Jacob or the vampire vs. the werewolf.”
•According to the CBO, the federal debt will represent 62% of the nation’s economy by the end of this year, the highest percentage since World War II.
•House Democrats have attached $10 billion in spending for government union jobs to the Afghanistan war funding bill.
•U.S. private employers added just 13,000 jobs in June, suggesting expectations of a big drop in the government’s upcoming nonfarm payrolls report were on target.
•A former Justice Department attorney who quit his job to protest the Obama administration’s handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case is accusing Attorney General Eric Holder of dropping the charges for racially motivated reasons.
Reprinted from: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/01/morning-bell-the-limitless-power-of-the-obama-kagan-congress/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
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