U.S. Congress
House of Representatives
Republicans attempted to trim the $1.2 trillion 2011 budget bill. At 4:40 a.m. on Saturday February 19, 2011 the House passed a Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act for 2011. The current Continuing Resolution expires on March 4th. The vote was 235 to 189 with 9 not voting. The actual amount that House Republicans cut ranges between $60 and $100 billion according to various sources. Senate Democrats are opposed to the House version and have said that Republicans want a "government shutdown," and President Obama has threatened to veto the bill. For NC Representatives, the vote was along party lines except that Republican Rep Jones (R-3) voted with the Democrats who voted against the budget cuts and continued funding of the government through the current fiscal year that ends on September 30, 2011.
Leading up to the Continuing Appropriations Act, over 100 amendments were debated and voted on. Speaker John Boehner made good on his promise to hear all amendments from the House of Representatives, in contrast to former Speaker Pelosi's leadership. Concerning Boehner's amendment proceedings, Pelosi said, the chamber is "driving itself to irrelevance with the amendment process here."
The most noteworthy amendments are the following:
Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) proposed an amendment from the Republican Study Committee to cut $22 billion more from the bill by reducing the Legislative Branch Appropriations funding by 11 percent, and cutting other non-security funding by 5.5 percent, except for aid to Israel. On Feb 18, 92 Republicans including Rep Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader; and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy joined all of the Democrats to defeat the amendment in a vote of 147 to 281 with 5 not voting. Therefore the pledge that $100 billion would be cut from the 2011 budget was not achieved, wrote Erick Erickson, Redstate.com, saying that Rep Cantor exhibited "a failure of leadership."
All NC Republican Representatives except Walter B. Jones, Jr. (R-3rd) voted for the amendment. All NC Democrat Representatives voted against it.
Four healthcare amendments met with considerable comment. (1) One amendment that passed 239 to 187 with 7 not voting was from Rep Rehberg (R-MT) that "would deny funding for the law from the Labor-HHS [Health and Human Services] Appropriations bill." Rehberg said, "It will create a firewall so that funds from this bill cannot be for that purpose."
All NC Republican Representatives voted for the amendment along with Mike McIntyre (D-7th). All other NC Democrat Representatives voted against it.
(2) Another healthcare amendment passed 246 - 182 with 5 not voting, was offered by Rep Emerson (R-MO) that would "deny funds to allow the Internal Revenue Service to enforce the individual mandate to purchase health insurance in the health care law."
NC Representatives voting for the amendment: Renee Ellmers (R-2nd), Walter B. Jones, Jr (R-3rd), Virginia Foxx (R-5th), Howard Coble (R-6th), Mike McIntyre (D-7th), Sue Myrick (R-9th), Patrick T. McHenry (R-10th), and Heath Shuler (D-11th).
NC Representatives voting against the amendment: G.K. Butterfield (D-1st), David E. Price (D-4th), Larry Kissell (D-8th), Melvin L. Watt (D-12th), and Brad Miller (D-13th).
(3) The House also passed two amendments "to defund the health care law in other parts of the budget," proposed by Rep King (R-Iowa). In both votes (No. 267 & 268) All NC Republican Representatives voted for the amendments, along with Democrat Mike McIntyre (D-7th). All other NC Democrat Representatives voted against them.
Rep Pence (R-IN) proposed eliminating over $75 million a year for Planned Parenthood. Although the Hyde Amendment bans the use of tax money on abortions, Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the U.S., according to Rep Pence. The amendment passed 240-185 with 1 voting present, and 7 not voting. In an interview with an NBC affilliate in Richmond, VA President Obama was asked to respond to the vote to defund Planned Parenthood amid allegations against them for "sex trafficking of minors, secret abortions for minors, and giving 'pimp' discounts." President Obama said, "sometimes these issues get manufactured." (From RedState.com)
NC Representatives voting against taxpayer abortions: Renee Ellmers (R-2nd), Walter B. Jones, Jr(R-3rd), Virginia Foxx (R-5th), Howard Coble (R-6th), Mike McIntyre (D-7th), Sue Myrick (R-9th), Patrick T. Mc Henry (R-10th), and Heath Shuler (D-11th).
NC Representatives voting for taxpayer abortion: G.K. Butterfield (D-1st), David E. Price (D-4th), Larry Kissell (D-8th), Melvin L. Watt (D-12th), and Brad Miller (D-13th).
On Feb 18 the House passed an amendment that "would bar the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from using any funding to implement the network-neutrality order it approved in December." The vote was 244 to 181 with 8 not voting, and proposed by Rep Walden (R-OR). "If left unchallenged, this claim of authority would allow the FCC to regulate any matter it discussed in the national broadband plan," Walden stated. The FCC under their own "network-neutrality order" could influence the type of programming that airs over public airways, including conservative talk radio. NC Representatives voted along party lines with Republicans voting for the amendment and Democrats voting against it.
On Feb 19 the House voted to "slow implementation of E15 [a fuel blend containing ethanol]. The vote passed 285 to 136 with 12 not voting. Rep Sullivan (R-OK) offered the amendment that "prevents the U.S. EPA from spending any federal funds on E15" he said. The slow down gives Congress the time to study ethanol further.
NC Representatives voting for the amendment: Renee Ellmers (R-2nd), Virginia Foxx (R-5th), Howard Coble (R-6th), Mike McIntyre (D-7th), Larry Kissell (D-8th), Sue Myrick (R-9th), Patrick T. Mc Henry (R-10th), Heath Shuler (D-11th) and Brad Miller (D-13th).
NC Representatives voting against it: G.K. Butterfield (D-1st), Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-3rd), David E. Price (D-4th), and Melvin L. Watt (D-12th).
Rep Scalise (R-LA) proposed an amendment that would "strip funding for a select list of the so-called czars" that are among President Obama's Czar staff. Positions identified in the bill are: Director, White House Office of Health Reform; Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change; Special Envoy for Climate Change; Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovations, and Council on Environmental Quality; Senior Advisor for Green Jobs; Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury assigned to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry and Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy; White House Director of Urban Affairs; Special Envoy to Oversee the Closure of the Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay; Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation, Department of the Treasury; and Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer, Federal Communications Commission. The vote was 249 to 179 with 1 voting present, and 4 not voting.
NC Representatives voting for the amendment: Renee Ellmers (R-2nd), Walter B. Jones, Jr (R-3rd), Virginia Foxx (R-5th), Howard Coble (R-6th), Mike McIntyre (D-7th), Larry Kissell (D-8th), Sue Myrick (R-9th), Patrick T. Mc Henry (R-10th), and Heath Shuler (D-11th).
NC Representatives voting against the amendment: G.K. Butterfield (D-1st), David E. Price (D-4th), Melvin L. Watt (D-12th), and Brad Miller (D-13th).
NC Representative Walter B. Jones, Jr (R-3rd) proposed Amendment No. 95 that would have reduced "by $400 million the amount made available to the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund;" and "increase by $400 million the amount made available to the Defense Spending Reduction Account" that is "designated as savings." The amendment failed in a vote of 135 to 294 with 4 not voting.
NC Representatives voting for the amendment: Walter B. Jones, Jr (R-3rd), Howard Coble (R-6th), Larry Kissell (D-8th), and Heath Shuler (D11th).
All other NC Representatives voted against the amendment.
Senate
The Senate passed the FISA Sunsets Extension Act of 2011. Both Senators Burr and Hagan voted to pass the bill that extends some "expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for 90 days." (MegaVote)
Both Senators Burr and Hagan also voted to approve the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act that reauthorizes $34.6 billion for two years. The House is working on its own version that would cover four years.
North Carolina Governor and the General Assembly
Balanced Budget Act of 2011
On Feb 10 the NC Legislature ratified the Balanced Budget Act of 2011 (Senate Bill #13). Governor Perdue vetoed the bill on Feb 22 which would have given ". . . her the authority she requested to cut $400 million in the current fiscal year and target another $400 million in immediate savings to help tackle next year's budget," according to Senator Phil Berger. Berger also stated, "Gov. Perdue's veto makes it more difficult to balance the state's budget without cutting teachers' jobs and negatively impacting our classrooms. And while her solution is to raise taxes that destroy private sector jobs, Senate Republicans refuse to reach further into North Carolinians' pockets."
The problem for Gov. Perdue may be that that the bill "diverts funds from business incentive programs Perdue supports, including Golden LEAF ($67.5 million), the Tobacco Trust Fund; the One North Carolina Fund, and Job Development Investment Grants," according to the Carolina Journal Online.
However, Gov. Perdue's veto may be overturned if three-fifths of the General Assembly votes to do so, according to Bloomberg News. House Speaker Tillis has said that about $10-$20 million is in dispute in a bill that will save tens of millions for NC.
House Bill 2 " Protect Health Care Freedom"
The bill passed in both the House and the Senate and was sent back to the House for a minor change approval before it is sent to the governor. The bill addresses Obamacare provisions requiring that citizens purchase health insurance indicating that a person should not be compelled to purchase health care services from an insurance provider. It also states that the NC Attorney General has the duty to represent its citizens in enforcing the NC law. Therefore, NC should join with other states in law suits against Obamacare. Gov. Perdue told the Charlotte Observer recently she would not veto the bill, but she does not intend to sign it either, saying 'it's not worth a battle,'" (Carolina Journal Online)
Governor Perdue's Budget
Governor Perdue presented her $19.9 billion budget proposal last week. She says there is a $2.4 billion budget deficit for NC. Her budget centers on extending a 1 cent temporary sales tax increase that was scheduled to expire; cutting the corporate tax rate to 4.9 percent, from 6.9; protecting education funding for teachers and teaching assistants; transferring funding from janitors and technology to the counties; eliminating 10,000 state government jobs (currently only 3000 are filled), and closing some state parks and welcome centers.
The legislators in Raleigh will review her budget and make their own proposals, but Perdue has veto power over the budget. Perdue has recently said, "I don't know how to spell tax increase," but that changed with her budget. Republican legislators have vowed to end the "temporary" tax that the governor wants to extend. On transferring funding liabilities to the counties, Republicans said the counties would have to either "raise taxes or cut services," according to the Greensboro News & Record.
Sources: house.gov; RedState.com," Eric Cantor's Failure of Leadership," Feb 22, 2011 and "On Obama's 'Trip to the Center,' He Stumbles Over Planned Parenthood," by Ben Howe, Feb 21, 2011; NationalJournal.com, "More Amendments Roll Through The House," by Humberto Sanchez, Billy House and Matthew DoBias, Feb 18, 2011 and "House Passes Amendment to Block Funds for Net Neutrality Order," by Juliana Gruenwald, Feb 17, 2011; ethanolproducer.com, "House vote to slow E15 a 'clarion call' for industry," by Holly Jessen, Feb 21, 2011; Foxnews.com, "House Votes to Defund 'Obamacare" as Government Inches Closer to Shutdown," Feb 18, 2011 and "House GOP Moves to Eliminate Obama 'Czars;'" Feb 21, 2011; grassfire.net Update, Feb 21, 2011; johnboehner.house.gov; Greensboro News & Record, "GOP Unhappy Perdue keeps extra sales tax," by Mark Binker, Feb 18, 2011 and "Editorial: Get serious about taxes," Feb 20, 2011; newsobserver.com, "Perdue's plan: a wily, political budget, by Rob Christensen, Feb 20, 2011 and "Veto foreseen, but it's a 'fight worth having;'" by J. Andrew Curliss, Feb 21, 2011: Senator Berger's Press Release, Feb 22, 2011; ncga.state.nc.us; carolinajournal.com, "Showdown between General Assembly, Perdue over budget cutting possible," by Sara Burrows, Feb 21, 2011; MegaVote, Feb 22, 2011; Bloomberg.com, "NC Legislature gives final ok to savings bill," by AP, Feb 10, 2011; and gop.gov.
Showing posts with label government health care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government health care. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Sun Journal Letter to the Editor by CCTA Vice Chairman, Nancy Murdoch
Health care
February 19, 2011
If the Obama health care plan is so great, why have so many companies and entities been granted waivers? Over 500 waivers were granted last December bringing the total to over 700. Some of these exemptions have gone to groups previously supporting and demanding government run health care, such as SEIU. In fact, 40 percent of the waivers have gone to unions. No one has been able to ascertain what guidelines are used for granting waivers, but it appears that some sort of cronyism is in play.
Once again the federal government plays the commerce card in an attempt to meet the Constitutional mandate. To call this a stretch is an understatement. Requiring everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, to buy insurance is the very core of the bill, as funding would be too costly otherwise. Even the administration recognizes this fact. If this bill is left to stand then the government can demand that we purchase anything, and we will have tipped the scale from freedom into a European style socialist democracy, the very system that our forefathers escaped in the search for liberty.
It appears that many Americans have given up on freedom and traded it for the illusion of security. With government health care on the horizon, not only the poor and elderly will depend on government, but all of us will be under the thumb of control. Americans still say they love freedom, but many are unwilling to do the work required to keep it. By allowing the government to remove the risks, rewards and consequences of decision making, we are destroying our freedom.
There is a group of people in America that believes people are incapable of making good decisions for themselves, and that they are smarter and more educated than the rest of us, and conversely should make the decisions that will benefit us the most. Another group is willing to go along with the first group either through apathy or a feeling of helplessness. Freedom lovers (the third group) are willing to do the hard work and have the patience, two attributes in short supply these days, in order to retain control over their own lives; to succeed or fail.
For those who would question what freedoms we have lost, either they are living in a cave and not reading this newspaper, or are completely clueless to the number of regulations and laws that are making it difficult to be a law abiding citizen. Falsely believing they are safer and more secure, they tolerate the intrusion into every aspect of their lives. When will we stop using human weaknesses and the failures of society as an excuse to replace freedom with more government control?
Nancy Murdoch, CCTA Vice Chairman
Havelock, NC
http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/government-95029-care-waivers.html
February 19, 2011
If the Obama health care plan is so great, why have so many companies and entities been granted waivers? Over 500 waivers were granted last December bringing the total to over 700. Some of these exemptions have gone to groups previously supporting and demanding government run health care, such as SEIU. In fact, 40 percent of the waivers have gone to unions. No one has been able to ascertain what guidelines are used for granting waivers, but it appears that some sort of cronyism is in play.
Once again the federal government plays the commerce card in an attempt to meet the Constitutional mandate. To call this a stretch is an understatement. Requiring everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, to buy insurance is the very core of the bill, as funding would be too costly otherwise. Even the administration recognizes this fact. If this bill is left to stand then the government can demand that we purchase anything, and we will have tipped the scale from freedom into a European style socialist democracy, the very system that our forefathers escaped in the search for liberty.
It appears that many Americans have given up on freedom and traded it for the illusion of security. With government health care on the horizon, not only the poor and elderly will depend on government, but all of us will be under the thumb of control. Americans still say they love freedom, but many are unwilling to do the work required to keep it. By allowing the government to remove the risks, rewards and consequences of decision making, we are destroying our freedom.
There is a group of people in America that believes people are incapable of making good decisions for themselves, and that they are smarter and more educated than the rest of us, and conversely should make the decisions that will benefit us the most. Another group is willing to go along with the first group either through apathy or a feeling of helplessness. Freedom lovers (the third group) are willing to do the hard work and have the patience, two attributes in short supply these days, in order to retain control over their own lives; to succeed or fail.
For those who would question what freedoms we have lost, either they are living in a cave and not reading this newspaper, or are completely clueless to the number of regulations and laws that are making it difficult to be a law abiding citizen. Falsely believing they are safer and more secure, they tolerate the intrusion into every aspect of their lives. When will we stop using human weaknesses and the failures of society as an excuse to replace freedom with more government control?
Nancy Murdoch, CCTA Vice Chairman
Havelock, NC
http://www.newbernsj.com/articles/government-95029-care-waivers.html
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Letter to the Editor, Carteret County News-Times: Patriot, Tom Austin
Letter to the Editor, Carteret County News-Times
P.O. Box 1679
Morehead City, NC 28557
Ref: letter by Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party [“Obama Rising - Totally in charge”] February 4, 2011
Feb. 9, 2011
Sir / Ms,
My apologies for taking so long to refute the many statements made by Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party, but I was dazzled at the inaccurate and false statements he made throughout the letter. So I will start at the top. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party - has stated that “conservative moderates” were drawing analogies between President “where is my teleprompter” Obama and the great communicator President Ronald Reagan. I have not heard any “conservative moderates” make any such statements. I did hear some liberal commentators trying to compare Obama to President Ronald Reagan. This surprised me because these same people had always declared their hate for President Ronald Reagan. And Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party, for your general information a moderate is not a conservative. As for conservatives, they have compared the two and Obama is shown to be a selfish little child next President Ronald Reagan. Obama can’t give a 2 minute speech without his teleprompter and speeches written by others. President Ronald Reagan would give an outline of what he wanted to say to speech writers and they would give a speech to him to review. He would then correct and rewrite it so it was his speech, not something created for him by a back room hack. Many times he sat at his desk and wrote it out longhand. President Obama always talks about how great it is to have the government in charge of your life and how only the government should be allowed to decide how you will live, if you are allowed to live. He will say that in speeches given in the united States. In speeches delivered outside the country, it is a different story. He will talk about how evil the United States is and he will apologize for us being a free and capitalist nation. President Ronald Reagan gave speeches on how great this nation is because of the strength of the American citizen and NOT because of the strength of government. He knew that it was citizens with a dream that built this nation to greatness, not the government. He believed in this country and its people.
As for the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, all the proof that has been presented is that the “alleged” shooter was a politically left leaning nut case, known to be a nut case and the sheriff in that country (a democrat) failed to do his job by putting the shooter on the list to prevent his buying a firearm. They allow that in Arizona! In Arizona law enforcement can put a person on a list to prevent a non-felon with behavior problems that may become a threat from buying a firearm. So the sheriff failed to do his job and you point a finger at the NRA? How does that work? And by the way Representative Gabrielle Giffords is a NRA member and a gun owner.
As a member of the local TEA Party group I must point out that I am NOT a Republican. We, the TEA Party, have given notice to the Republican party that we will NOT be co-opted. We may agree on some things, but we are tired of the normal DC politics in all the parties. So I don’t know where you get the statement “GOP - TEA Party prattle”, unless you are just against the Constitution of the United States of America. That is what we in the TEA Party are working for. To bad the DNC can’t say the same.
The health care bill may have some changes in it, but it will not be revoked as long as Senator Reid, President Obama and other socialist leaning people are in power. They are working as hard as they can to form a socialist economy in this country and destroy the capitalist economy we have now that allows an individual to dream and work to make that dream come true. So we can just keep working to put an end to the government intrusion into our health care and the dictatorial control over the medical professionals. You want to reduce health care cost? Get the government out of it!
Medicare will stay. There will be changes and improvements. No conservative is going to abandon people to die in the street. Conservatives believe in life. We are the ones against murdering the unborn babies. It is the democrats and other liberals that want to kill the children even before they have had a chance to breath. What greater hatred for life can there be then to kill the unborn baby?
Will Social Security stay? For a while yet. I personally want it phased out. It would take a few decades, but we should start looking at ending it as a retirement service. Those already on Social Security would stay. It is to late to do anything else for them, but why should a person 20 or 25 be forced to take part in a ponzi scam? If you feel the government should be involved in forcing someone to put back their own money for their retirement, then let the individual decide how that money is saved and secured. It is their money and their future. If they want to buy stocks or mutual funds or just put it in a bank account that should be their decision. I can’t find out where the Government has the right to put a gun to my head and say “give us your money to give to someone else and maybe we will give you someone else’s money when you get old”. If you put the money in a bank or in stocks then you decide who gets it when you die, not the government. My money should be private. YOU did not earn my money and I did not earn yours. Yes Social Security should be phased out. It is nothing but a FDR socialist controlled operation to have the government control your life as you get older.
The democrats, throughout history, did not get the “big things” right. They fought against Civil Rights. In case you have forgotten, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a REPUBLICAN as was his father. It was the Republicans that fought against slavery. The Democrats supported it. It was the Democrats that started the KKK. The Republicans fought against them. It was a democrat president that segregated the US military. It was the NC Democratic party that sectioned the white riot in Wilmington, NC (the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898) and passed the “Jim Crow” laws in NC. So much for democrats caring about racial equality. As for the Medicare and Medicaid and their bloated programs, I don’t think I would be doing much bragging. The massive amount of paperwork and people developed to support these programs should be an embarrassment to anyone involved. The doctors and hospitals say “this will cost $X” to save a live or improve the quality of a person’s life, but the government bean counters say “we will only pay you half $X”, so who is putting a price on a person’s life here? If the doctor or hospital say “we can not do it for that amount” (not will not, but cannot) the bean counters say “we are not paying any more”. So the doctor or hospital will work to save the life, but the doctor or hospital is no longer free. Being forced to work for what the government dictates has turned them, doctors and hospitals, into serfs or servants without the right to sell their skills on the open market. And the democrats want more of this bloated actions and government control with their “health care program”.
I cannot believe that anyone, including Mr. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party, would have anything to say about the new Speaker of the House after the dictatorial action of the possible psychotic, botox addicted, crazy eyed, shrilled voice, pro-socialist, pro-Marxist, anti American and anti-capitalist Nancy Pelosi. If she and Sen. Harry Reid had their way we would have a socialist economy controlled by the unions with a Marxist government and under the thumb of the UN.
Kenneth W. Humphrey’s (Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party) attack on the relationship between the conservatives in this country and President Ronald Reagan is at best ludicrous. Did President Ronald Reagan do things that the “far right” conservatives didn’t like? I am sure there were some things. Like when he tried to work with the democrats and they kept trying to force their extreme leftist agenda, but they never doubted his love for this country. President Obama’s love towards this country has been doubted from the very start. The deficit President Ronald Reagan had to run up was partly to repair the military the democrat Jimmy Carter had worked so hard to destroy. Were we a stronger country when Jimmy carter left office? NO. Were we a stronger nation when President Ronald Reagan left office? YES!
Bill Maher? Why would anyone bring a leftist comic that has falling ratings into any rational conversation? Why would anyone care what he has to say? And considering Mr. Maher has stated his hate for the Bible and Christians and President Ronald Reagan we can expect nothing worthwhile from him. Mr. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party I would think real hard before I used his name, Bill Maher, in any more letters or conversations unless you are trying to sway someone away from God the Almighty, Jesus and the Constitution of the United states of America. And it is not just Christians, Bill Maher hates all religions.
If you want to discuss the stock market, please remember that it was going up the last 6 months when President George H. W. Bush was running for office, but the democrats and liberal media lied and claimed the recession that followed the Gulf War was still going on. To the best of my knowledge there is always a recession following a large military action. This one was very short and the economy was raising. BUT it was falling the last 8 months that Clinton was in office and the democrats claimed it was good and going up. How does that figure? It was not Clinton’s fault, it was just the dot-com bubble busting. As for the last 6 months GWB was in office, the democrats had been in control of Congress for 18 months before that and President George W. Bush had tried many times to get them to do something about the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mea problems, but they had refused. So when the housing market went south and it hit the stock exchange due to the use of bundled sub-prime mortgages the banks were FORCED by the democrats in congress to give out, the economy dropped. I am no fan of President George W. Bush but he did warn them what was going to happen and asked for the changes to be made, but they turned their back on him. Then they tried to blame President George W. Bush for their failures to take corrective action. The “power dive” that Mr. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party refers to was increased by the actions of the unqualified, America hating, pro-socialist, Marxist trained, self important, arrogant, tool of the left that was elected president, President Barrack Hessian Obama and his admitted communist advisors.
I could go on and on, but let me just point out a few things quickly. Michelle Bachmann is NOT the leader of the TEA party. She is a member of a congressional caucus. BIG difference. Gov. Sarah Palin is NOT the leader of the Republican Party. She is one voice among many that is calling out for change. Yes, she is very visible. Maybe that is because the people like what they hear and believe what she says.
President Barrack Hessian Obama has NO leadership ability. I don’t think he has the ability to lead a group of people out of a burning building with the doors open and the lights on unless a teleprompter told him the way! So I will end this by saying that every time I see him standing there with his chin pointing at the sky and his arrogant nose in the air I think of the photos I have seen in history books of Mussolini and how he, Mussolini, was also a big fan of government control and socialist economies.
Respectfully,
Thomas H. Austin
SSgt. USMC (retired)
Member Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots
P.O. Box 1679
Morehead City, NC 28557
Ref: letter by Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party [“Obama Rising - Totally in charge”] February 4, 2011
Feb. 9, 2011
Sir / Ms,
My apologies for taking so long to refute the many statements made by Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party, but I was dazzled at the inaccurate and false statements he made throughout the letter. So I will start at the top. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party - has stated that “conservative moderates” were drawing analogies between President “where is my teleprompter” Obama and the great communicator President Ronald Reagan. I have not heard any “conservative moderates” make any such statements. I did hear some liberal commentators trying to compare Obama to President Ronald Reagan. This surprised me because these same people had always declared their hate for President Ronald Reagan. And Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party, for your general information a moderate is not a conservative. As for conservatives, they have compared the two and Obama is shown to be a selfish little child next President Ronald Reagan. Obama can’t give a 2 minute speech without his teleprompter and speeches written by others. President Ronald Reagan would give an outline of what he wanted to say to speech writers and they would give a speech to him to review. He would then correct and rewrite it so it was his speech, not something created for him by a back room hack. Many times he sat at his desk and wrote it out longhand. President Obama always talks about how great it is to have the government in charge of your life and how only the government should be allowed to decide how you will live, if you are allowed to live. He will say that in speeches given in the united States. In speeches delivered outside the country, it is a different story. He will talk about how evil the United States is and he will apologize for us being a free and capitalist nation. President Ronald Reagan gave speeches on how great this nation is because of the strength of the American citizen and NOT because of the strength of government. He knew that it was citizens with a dream that built this nation to greatness, not the government. He believed in this country and its people.
As for the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, all the proof that has been presented is that the “alleged” shooter was a politically left leaning nut case, known to be a nut case and the sheriff in that country (a democrat) failed to do his job by putting the shooter on the list to prevent his buying a firearm. They allow that in Arizona! In Arizona law enforcement can put a person on a list to prevent a non-felon with behavior problems that may become a threat from buying a firearm. So the sheriff failed to do his job and you point a finger at the NRA? How does that work? And by the way Representative Gabrielle Giffords is a NRA member and a gun owner.
As a member of the local TEA Party group I must point out that I am NOT a Republican. We, the TEA Party, have given notice to the Republican party that we will NOT be co-opted. We may agree on some things, but we are tired of the normal DC politics in all the parties. So I don’t know where you get the statement “GOP - TEA Party prattle”, unless you are just against the Constitution of the United States of America. That is what we in the TEA Party are working for. To bad the DNC can’t say the same.
The health care bill may have some changes in it, but it will not be revoked as long as Senator Reid, President Obama and other socialist leaning people are in power. They are working as hard as they can to form a socialist economy in this country and destroy the capitalist economy we have now that allows an individual to dream and work to make that dream come true. So we can just keep working to put an end to the government intrusion into our health care and the dictatorial control over the medical professionals. You want to reduce health care cost? Get the government out of it!
Medicare will stay. There will be changes and improvements. No conservative is going to abandon people to die in the street. Conservatives believe in life. We are the ones against murdering the unborn babies. It is the democrats and other liberals that want to kill the children even before they have had a chance to breath. What greater hatred for life can there be then to kill the unborn baby?
Will Social Security stay? For a while yet. I personally want it phased out. It would take a few decades, but we should start looking at ending it as a retirement service. Those already on Social Security would stay. It is to late to do anything else for them, but why should a person 20 or 25 be forced to take part in a ponzi scam? If you feel the government should be involved in forcing someone to put back their own money for their retirement, then let the individual decide how that money is saved and secured. It is their money and their future. If they want to buy stocks or mutual funds or just put it in a bank account that should be their decision. I can’t find out where the Government has the right to put a gun to my head and say “give us your money to give to someone else and maybe we will give you someone else’s money when you get old”. If you put the money in a bank or in stocks then you decide who gets it when you die, not the government. My money should be private. YOU did not earn my money and I did not earn yours. Yes Social Security should be phased out. It is nothing but a FDR socialist controlled operation to have the government control your life as you get older.
The democrats, throughout history, did not get the “big things” right. They fought against Civil Rights. In case you have forgotten, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a REPUBLICAN as was his father. It was the Republicans that fought against slavery. The Democrats supported it. It was the Democrats that started the KKK. The Republicans fought against them. It was a democrat president that segregated the US military. It was the NC Democratic party that sectioned the white riot in Wilmington, NC (the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898) and passed the “Jim Crow” laws in NC. So much for democrats caring about racial equality. As for the Medicare and Medicaid and their bloated programs, I don’t think I would be doing much bragging. The massive amount of paperwork and people developed to support these programs should be an embarrassment to anyone involved. The doctors and hospitals say “this will cost $X” to save a live or improve the quality of a person’s life, but the government bean counters say “we will only pay you half $X”, so who is putting a price on a person’s life here? If the doctor or hospital say “we can not do it for that amount” (not will not, but cannot) the bean counters say “we are not paying any more”. So the doctor or hospital will work to save the life, but the doctor or hospital is no longer free. Being forced to work for what the government dictates has turned them, doctors and hospitals, into serfs or servants without the right to sell their skills on the open market. And the democrats want more of this bloated actions and government control with their “health care program”.
I cannot believe that anyone, including Mr. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party, would have anything to say about the new Speaker of the House after the dictatorial action of the possible psychotic, botox addicted, crazy eyed, shrilled voice, pro-socialist, pro-Marxist, anti American and anti-capitalist Nancy Pelosi. If she and Sen. Harry Reid had their way we would have a socialist economy controlled by the unions with a Marxist government and under the thumb of the UN.
Kenneth W. Humphrey’s (Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party) attack on the relationship between the conservatives in this country and President Ronald Reagan is at best ludicrous. Did President Ronald Reagan do things that the “far right” conservatives didn’t like? I am sure there were some things. Like when he tried to work with the democrats and they kept trying to force their extreme leftist agenda, but they never doubted his love for this country. President Obama’s love towards this country has been doubted from the very start. The deficit President Ronald Reagan had to run up was partly to repair the military the democrat Jimmy Carter had worked so hard to destroy. Were we a stronger country when Jimmy carter left office? NO. Were we a stronger nation when President Ronald Reagan left office? YES!
Bill Maher? Why would anyone bring a leftist comic that has falling ratings into any rational conversation? Why would anyone care what he has to say? And considering Mr. Maher has stated his hate for the Bible and Christians and President Ronald Reagan we can expect nothing worthwhile from him. Mr. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party I would think real hard before I used his name, Bill Maher, in any more letters or conversations unless you are trying to sway someone away from God the Almighty, Jesus and the Constitution of the United states of America. And it is not just Christians, Bill Maher hates all religions.
If you want to discuss the stock market, please remember that it was going up the last 6 months when President George H. W. Bush was running for office, but the democrats and liberal media lied and claimed the recession that followed the Gulf War was still going on. To the best of my knowledge there is always a recession following a large military action. This one was very short and the economy was raising. BUT it was falling the last 8 months that Clinton was in office and the democrats claimed it was good and going up. How does that figure? It was not Clinton’s fault, it was just the dot-com bubble busting. As for the last 6 months GWB was in office, the democrats had been in control of Congress for 18 months before that and President George W. Bush had tried many times to get them to do something about the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mea problems, but they had refused. So when the housing market went south and it hit the stock exchange due to the use of bundled sub-prime mortgages the banks were FORCED by the democrats in congress to give out, the economy dropped. I am no fan of President George W. Bush but he did warn them what was going to happen and asked for the changes to be made, but they turned their back on him. Then they tried to blame President George W. Bush for their failures to take corrective action. The “power dive” that Mr. Kenneth W. Humphrey - Chairman Carteret County Democrat Party refers to was increased by the actions of the unqualified, America hating, pro-socialist, Marxist trained, self important, arrogant, tool of the left that was elected president, President Barrack Hessian Obama and his admitted communist advisors.
I could go on and on, but let me just point out a few things quickly. Michelle Bachmann is NOT the leader of the TEA party. She is a member of a congressional caucus. BIG difference. Gov. Sarah Palin is NOT the leader of the Republican Party. She is one voice among many that is calling out for change. Yes, she is very visible. Maybe that is because the people like what they hear and believe what she says.
President Barrack Hessian Obama has NO leadership ability. I don’t think he has the ability to lead a group of people out of a burning building with the doors open and the lights on unless a teleprompter told him the way! So I will end this by saying that every time I see him standing there with his chin pointing at the sky and his arrogant nose in the air I think of the photos I have seen in history books of Mussolini and how he, Mussolini, was also a big fan of government control and socialist economies.
Respectfully,
Thomas H. Austin
SSgt. USMC (retired)
Member Crystal Coast TEA Party Patriots
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Death Panels are Here
Death Panels are Here
http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com/
by Diane Rufino, Jan. 3, 2010
Socialized health care has always conjured up the fear of rationed health care to those deemed of lower social value, such as the elderly and the disabled (but not necessarily criminals and predators, of course). We’ve heard talk of “death panels” now for at least a year – those beaurocrats who would be responsible for deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not…. Those who would have to determine the value of the life that requires medical care and then make the weighted decision as to whether the costs involved would be better spent on others.
It sounds like a “cost-benefit analysis” – the kind of analysis that government officials, as well as the rich and powerful, are so fond of making to justify decisions and investments.
Rationed health care (or death panel decisions) would make sense, even though in the minds of Americans, we don’t want to face that cold reality. We look around and see the dynamic changing in our country. Those who value hard work and education and pursue the American dream (wealth and prosperity) are becoming the minority. The middle class and wealthy class are shrinking. In other words, the income tax-paying segment of society is shrinking. Those who exist at the poverty level or just above are out-producing the contributors. Immigrants and illegals are burdening our system. Health care for all that is subsidized by a shrinking subset of the population is bound to reach the point where care will NEED TO be rationed in order to remain feasible.
On July 31, 2009, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann took the floor of the House and addressed rationed health care:
“We need to know what the people who advised the President of the United States think and believe about health care reform, Mr. Speaker. Listening to the President’s advisors’ actual words is very enlightening.
This morning I read a column written by Betsy McCoy – from a column dated July 24, 2009 – and I’d like to quote extensively from it now. Ms. McCoy wrote the following. She said that the health care bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions for our care in Presidential appointees. The government will decide – not the people, not their doctors – what our plan will cover, how much lee-way our doctors will have, and what senior citizens will finally get under Medicare.
But what is more important are the actual words of the President’s advisors on health care. Here are the words from one of the President’s first advisors, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who advocates health care rationing by age and disability. He is the brother of the White House Chief of Staff and has already been appointed to two key positions: One is as Health Policy Advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and the other is as a member of the federal counsel on Comparable Effectiveness Research. This is what Dr. Emanuel has written, and I quote: “Big promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, establishing electronic medical records, and improving quality of health care are merely lipstick measures for cost control… they are more for show and public relations than for true change.”
Isn’t this how Democrats promised to save $500 billion in health care costs? The President’s own advisor, however, says this is just lip service. This isn’t where the real savings are. Savings, the President’s advisor, writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients. For example, doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously.
Now hear me, Mr. Speaker. This is the President’s own advisor writing this: ‘Doctors take their Hippocratic Oath too seriously’…. as an imperative to do everything possible for the patient, regardless of the cost or effects on others. But that’s what people want and expect their doctors to do. Dr. Emanuel, on the other hand, wants doctors to look beyond the needs of the patient and consider social justice, such as if the money would be better spent on someone else.
This is a horrific notion to our nation’s doctors, but it is also a horrific notion to each American because doctors believe, just as Americans believe, that social justice is given out one patient at a time. But the President’s advisor, Dr. Emanuel, believes that communitarianism should guide decisions on who gets care. He says that care should be reserved for the non-disabled. So watch out if you or someone you love is disabled. He says care should be reserved for the non-disabled and not given to those who are “irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.” An obvious example, he said, is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia (even though they may have spent their entire lives as productive good citizens).
We just lost my father-in-law to dementia two months ago. I thank God that the doctors were able to alleviate my poor father-in-law’s symptoms at the end of his life, at age 85. Apparently, under the Democrats’ health care plan, my father-in-law would not have received the high quality of care that he received in his last two months of life. The same would apply for a grandmother with Parkinsons or a child with cerebral palsy. Watch out.
In fact, the President’s advisor defends discrimination against older patients. He writes, and I quote: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. Every person lives through different stages of life, rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority care over 65-year-olds, everyone who is now 65 was previously 25.” [The error in his logic, of course, is that everyone really needs the medical attention when they are closer to 65 and not when they are younger, and they live their lives expecting that greater medical attention when they need it… when they need the quality of life and the comfort that comes from medical intervention]
These bills that are being rushed through Congress right now are going to cut over $500 billion from Medicare in the next ten years, putting it on the backs of the State legislatures to fill in the gaps. Knowing how unpopular these cuts are, the President’s Budget Director, Peter Orszag, has urged Congress to sever their own authority over Medicare in place of a new Presidentially-appointed beaurocracy that will not be accountable to the public.
The President’s next advisor, Dr. David Blumenthal, recommends that we slow medical innovation in order to control health care spending. He has long advocated government spending controls. He in fact considers the worth of medical innovation – that is, new and expensive treatment and devices – to be debatable. He says they are often associated with long waits and selective availability. He questions whether the timely, or less-than timely, care Americans get with innovative health care treatments is worth the cost.
Mr. Speaker, Americans need to wake up and read what the President and his advisors say about healthcare reform.”
On August 7, 2009, Sarah Palin brought up the concept of government “Death Panels” when she wrote:
“As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!
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.
Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.
Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.
We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.”
Palin was severely criticized for such talk of death panels. How preposterous.
But now we realize that Sarah Palin deserves an apology and Michele Bachmann, although we didn’t want to have to conceive of rationed care here in the United States, was trying to warn us. We just learned, thanks to an article in the New York Times that these women were right all along. The new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will indeed lead to “death panels” deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not. Oh, it will not be as overt as that. Instead, we will see it instead through a doctor “advising” elder patients or counseling them on end-of-life options that don’t include expensive treatments.
And in fact, that is exactly how it will play out. Under a new Medicare policy not included in the original law passed by Congress, a rule issued by the recess-appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment. This option was originally going to be included in the healthcare reform bill, but it was omitted from the final health care bill because of the potential political fall-out and claims that it would encourage euthanasia.
The final version of the health care legislation, which was signed into law by President Obama in March, authorizes Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or “wellness” visits. The new Medicare rule provides that doctors will be compensated for discussing at such wellness” visits “voluntary advance care planning,” which includes end-of-life treatment.
This rule will inevitably lead to bureaucrats drafting general guidelines as to who is “fit” to live and who is not. (Here is where you are supposed to shutter because you just recalled the “death panels” of Nazi Germany).
So now the Death panel ‘myth’ has been debunked. As Cal Thomas wrote on January 3rd, in his article: “New Rule May be Deadly”: “Ah, but it’s not a myth, and that’s where Palin nailed it. All inhumanities begin with small steps; otherwise the public might rebel against a policy that went straight to the “final solution.” All human life was once regarded as having value because even government saw it as “endowed by our Creator.”
It’s true. The death panel is not a myth. It is indeed a reality which started with the New Year. The question now will be whether the panels will remain should Obamacare be invalidated or repealed. Will Medicare continue to pay doctors to counsel elderly Americans on end-of-life options that don’t include expensive treatments? At what point does advice become “coercion”? And at what point does the payment itself become coercive? Will it cloud the doctor’s mind with respect to his Hippocratic oath?
Mr. Thomas also wrote: “Once the definition of human life changes, all human lives become potentially expendable if they don’t measure up to “evolving” government standards. It will all be dressed up with the best possible motives behind it and sold to the public… [T]he next step [will be] physician-assisted suicide and, if not stopped, government-mandated euthanasia.”.
References:
Sarah Palin, “Statement on the Current Healthcare Debate,” Facebook, Aug. 7, 2009. Referenced at: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434
Representative Michele Bachmann’s Address to the House regarding the President’s Healthcare Advisors, July 31, 2009, YouTube. Referenced at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CHBvKGmevI
Cal Thomas, “New Rule May Be Deadly,” The Daily Reflector, January 3, 2010. Referenced at: http://www.reflector.com/opinion/thomas/cal-thomas-new-rule-may-be-deadly-228345
Robert Pear, “Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir,” NY Times, Dec. 25, 2010. Referenced at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/politics/26death.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com/
by Diane Rufino, Jan. 3, 2010
Socialized health care has always conjured up the fear of rationed health care to those deemed of lower social value, such as the elderly and the disabled (but not necessarily criminals and predators, of course). We’ve heard talk of “death panels” now for at least a year – those beaurocrats who would be responsible for deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not…. Those who would have to determine the value of the life that requires medical care and then make the weighted decision as to whether the costs involved would be better spent on others.
It sounds like a “cost-benefit analysis” – the kind of analysis that government officials, as well as the rich and powerful, are so fond of making to justify decisions and investments.
Rationed health care (or death panel decisions) would make sense, even though in the minds of Americans, we don’t want to face that cold reality. We look around and see the dynamic changing in our country. Those who value hard work and education and pursue the American dream (wealth and prosperity) are becoming the minority. The middle class and wealthy class are shrinking. In other words, the income tax-paying segment of society is shrinking. Those who exist at the poverty level or just above are out-producing the contributors. Immigrants and illegals are burdening our system. Health care for all that is subsidized by a shrinking subset of the population is bound to reach the point where care will NEED TO be rationed in order to remain feasible.
On July 31, 2009, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann took the floor of the House and addressed rationed health care:
“We need to know what the people who advised the President of the United States think and believe about health care reform, Mr. Speaker. Listening to the President’s advisors’ actual words is very enlightening.
This morning I read a column written by Betsy McCoy – from a column dated July 24, 2009 – and I’d like to quote extensively from it now. Ms. McCoy wrote the following. She said that the health care bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions for our care in Presidential appointees. The government will decide – not the people, not their doctors – what our plan will cover, how much lee-way our doctors will have, and what senior citizens will finally get under Medicare.
But what is more important are the actual words of the President’s advisors on health care. Here are the words from one of the President’s first advisors, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who advocates health care rationing by age and disability. He is the brother of the White House Chief of Staff and has already been appointed to two key positions: One is as Health Policy Advisor at the Office of Management and Budget and the other is as a member of the federal counsel on Comparable Effectiveness Research. This is what Dr. Emanuel has written, and I quote: “Big promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, establishing electronic medical records, and improving quality of health care are merely lipstick measures for cost control… they are more for show and public relations than for true change.”
Isn’t this how Democrats promised to save $500 billion in health care costs? The President’s own advisor, however, says this is just lip service. This isn’t where the real savings are. Savings, the President’s advisor, writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients. For example, doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously.
Now hear me, Mr. Speaker. This is the President’s own advisor writing this: ‘Doctors take their Hippocratic Oath too seriously’…. as an imperative to do everything possible for the patient, regardless of the cost or effects on others. But that’s what people want and expect their doctors to do. Dr. Emanuel, on the other hand, wants doctors to look beyond the needs of the patient and consider social justice, such as if the money would be better spent on someone else.
This is a horrific notion to our nation’s doctors, but it is also a horrific notion to each American because doctors believe, just as Americans believe, that social justice is given out one patient at a time. But the President’s advisor, Dr. Emanuel, believes that communitarianism should guide decisions on who gets care. He says that care should be reserved for the non-disabled. So watch out if you or someone you love is disabled. He says care should be reserved for the non-disabled and not given to those who are “irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.” An obvious example, he said, is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia (even though they may have spent their entire lives as productive good citizens).
We just lost my father-in-law to dementia two months ago. I thank God that the doctors were able to alleviate my poor father-in-law’s symptoms at the end of his life, at age 85. Apparently, under the Democrats’ health care plan, my father-in-law would not have received the high quality of care that he received in his last two months of life. The same would apply for a grandmother with Parkinsons or a child with cerebral palsy. Watch out.
In fact, the President’s advisor defends discrimination against older patients. He writes, and I quote: “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination. Every person lives through different stages of life, rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority care over 65-year-olds, everyone who is now 65 was previously 25.” [The error in his logic, of course, is that everyone really needs the medical attention when they are closer to 65 and not when they are younger, and they live their lives expecting that greater medical attention when they need it… when they need the quality of life and the comfort that comes from medical intervention]
These bills that are being rushed through Congress right now are going to cut over $500 billion from Medicare in the next ten years, putting it on the backs of the State legislatures to fill in the gaps. Knowing how unpopular these cuts are, the President’s Budget Director, Peter Orszag, has urged Congress to sever their own authority over Medicare in place of a new Presidentially-appointed beaurocracy that will not be accountable to the public.
The President’s next advisor, Dr. David Blumenthal, recommends that we slow medical innovation in order to control health care spending. He has long advocated government spending controls. He in fact considers the worth of medical innovation – that is, new and expensive treatment and devices – to be debatable. He says they are often associated with long waits and selective availability. He questions whether the timely, or less-than timely, care Americans get with innovative health care treatments is worth the cost.
Mr. Speaker, Americans need to wake up and read what the President and his advisors say about healthcare reform.”
On August 7, 2009, Sarah Palin brought up the concept of government “Death Panels” when she wrote:
“As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!
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.
Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.
Rep. Michele Bachmann highlighted the Orwellian thinking of the president’s health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the White House chief of staff, in a floor speech to the House of Representatives. I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors.
We must step up and engage in this most crucial debate. Nationalizing our health care system is a point of no return for government interference in the lives of its citizens. If we go down this path, there will be no turning back. Ronald Reagan once wrote, “Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.” Let’s stop and think and make our voices heard before it’s too late.”
Palin was severely criticized for such talk of death panels. How preposterous.
But now we realize that Sarah Palin deserves an apology and Michele Bachmann, although we didn’t want to have to conceive of rationed care here in the United States, was trying to warn us. We just learned, thanks to an article in the New York Times that these women were right all along. The new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will indeed lead to “death panels” deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not. Oh, it will not be as overt as that. Instead, we will see it instead through a doctor “advising” elder patients or counseling them on end-of-life options that don’t include expensive treatments.
And in fact, that is exactly how it will play out. Under a new Medicare policy not included in the original law passed by Congress, a rule issued by the recess-appointed Dr. Donald M. Berwick, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment. This option was originally going to be included in the healthcare reform bill, but it was omitted from the final health care bill because of the potential political fall-out and claims that it would encourage euthanasia.
The final version of the health care legislation, which was signed into law by President Obama in March, authorizes Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or “wellness” visits. The new Medicare rule provides that doctors will be compensated for discussing at such wellness” visits “voluntary advance care planning,” which includes end-of-life treatment.
This rule will inevitably lead to bureaucrats drafting general guidelines as to who is “fit” to live and who is not. (Here is where you are supposed to shutter because you just recalled the “death panels” of Nazi Germany).
So now the Death panel ‘myth’ has been debunked. As Cal Thomas wrote on January 3rd, in his article: “New Rule May be Deadly”: “Ah, but it’s not a myth, and that’s where Palin nailed it. All inhumanities begin with small steps; otherwise the public might rebel against a policy that went straight to the “final solution.” All human life was once regarded as having value because even government saw it as “endowed by our Creator.”
It’s true. The death panel is not a myth. It is indeed a reality which started with the New Year. The question now will be whether the panels will remain should Obamacare be invalidated or repealed. Will Medicare continue to pay doctors to counsel elderly Americans on end-of-life options that don’t include expensive treatments? At what point does advice become “coercion”? And at what point does the payment itself become coercive? Will it cloud the doctor’s mind with respect to his Hippocratic oath?
Mr. Thomas also wrote: “Once the definition of human life changes, all human lives become potentially expendable if they don’t measure up to “evolving” government standards. It will all be dressed up with the best possible motives behind it and sold to the public… [T]he next step [will be] physician-assisted suicide and, if not stopped, government-mandated euthanasia.”.
References:
Sarah Palin, “Statement on the Current Healthcare Debate,” Facebook, Aug. 7, 2009. Referenced at: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=113851103434
Representative Michele Bachmann’s Address to the House regarding the President’s Healthcare Advisors, July 31, 2009, YouTube. Referenced at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CHBvKGmevI
Cal Thomas, “New Rule May Be Deadly,” The Daily Reflector, January 3, 2010. Referenced at: http://www.reflector.com/opinion/thomas/cal-thomas-new-rule-may-be-deadly-228345
Robert Pear, “Obama Returns to End-of-Life Plan That Caused Stir,” NY Times, Dec. 25, 2010. Referenced at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/politics/26death.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
MORNING BELL: Get to Work Getting Control of Government
The federal government is out of control. Congress must immediately reestablish legislative accountability by posting complete legislation, ending earmarks, reviewing all unauthorized programs and respecting constitutional limits on government.
Remember when Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL) was asked to identify what part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance, and he replied: “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest.” Remember when Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) told his Hayward, Calif., constituents that “The Federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country.” And remember when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), famously said of Obamacare: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
The progressives that controlled the 111th Congress simply had no respect for the limitations on federal government power that the Founders placed in the U.S. Constitution. That is why 56% of last week’s voters told the national exit poll that “government is doing too much.” That is why progressives no longer control the House. But there are still progressives in the White House. In just the past year, the federal agencies under President Barack Obama’s control have already promulgated 43 new rules which the Obama administration itself estimated will cost the U.S. economy $26.5 billion a year. And President Obama is just getting warmed up. The 2,319 page financial regulation bill requires 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies. The 2,700 page Obamacare bill contains more than 1,000 instances where Congress instructed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to regulate the health care industry. And the Federal Communications Commission is considering implementing, for the first time in the history of the Internet, “net neutrality” regulations that will undermine investment incentives, thereby robbing the nation of much-needed broadband upgrades.
The federal government is out of control. Congress must immediately reestablish legislative accountability by posting complete legislation, ending earmarks, reviewing all unauthorized programs and respecting constitutional limits on government. Congress must check executive branch overreach with aggressive oversight, roll back recent government interventions, stop unnecessary administrative regulations and sunset new ones, restrict bureaucrats’ rulemaking authority and override expansive executive orders.
Specifically, Congress must:
•Provide Legislative Text: Each House of Congress must adopt a rule requiring the public posting of the text of each bill and major amendment not less than 72 hours before floor debate on that bill or amendment.
•Stop Earmarks: Congress must permanently end the earmarking process which favors local pork projects over the national interest.
•End Automatic Funding: Any program (other than for physical protection of Americans) that Congress has not reauthorized must be suspended for review. Committees must not be permitted to create new programs with automatic funding or that specify minimum funding levels to circumvent the appropriations process.
•Reassert Constitutional Limits: Rather than deferring to courts, Congress must promptly repeal any unconstitutional legislation enacted by previous Congresses, consider the constitutionality of pending bills and assert constitutional limits on the size and scope of government.
•Stop Unnecessary Regulations: Congress must use the Congressional Review Act to stop new and unnecessary regulations. If the President blocks such action, Congress must use appropriations riders to prohibit agencies from adopting such rules.
Conservatives must pay close attention to what this Congress does and be prepared to hold leaders accountable. That is why The Heritage Foundation has created the Solutions for America: Get to Work checklist. Getting Control of Government is one of the five essential tasks Congress must complete to fulfill its electoral mandate. You can download and print all of the “Get to Work” fact sheets and checklist here.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/11/10/morning-bell-get-to-work-getting-control-of-government/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Remember when Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL) was asked to identify what part of the Constitution empowers the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance, and he replied: “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest.” Remember when Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) told his Hayward, Calif., constituents that “The Federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country.” And remember when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), famously said of Obamacare: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
The progressives that controlled the 111th Congress simply had no respect for the limitations on federal government power that the Founders placed in the U.S. Constitution. That is why 56% of last week’s voters told the national exit poll that “government is doing too much.” That is why progressives no longer control the House. But there are still progressives in the White House. In just the past year, the federal agencies under President Barack Obama’s control have already promulgated 43 new rules which the Obama administration itself estimated will cost the U.S. economy $26.5 billion a year. And President Obama is just getting warmed up. The 2,319 page financial regulation bill requires 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies. The 2,700 page Obamacare bill contains more than 1,000 instances where Congress instructed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to regulate the health care industry. And the Federal Communications Commission is considering implementing, for the first time in the history of the Internet, “net neutrality” regulations that will undermine investment incentives, thereby robbing the nation of much-needed broadband upgrades.
The federal government is out of control. Congress must immediately reestablish legislative accountability by posting complete legislation, ending earmarks, reviewing all unauthorized programs and respecting constitutional limits on government. Congress must check executive branch overreach with aggressive oversight, roll back recent government interventions, stop unnecessary administrative regulations and sunset new ones, restrict bureaucrats’ rulemaking authority and override expansive executive orders.
Specifically, Congress must:
•Provide Legislative Text: Each House of Congress must adopt a rule requiring the public posting of the text of each bill and major amendment not less than 72 hours before floor debate on that bill or amendment.
•Stop Earmarks: Congress must permanently end the earmarking process which favors local pork projects over the national interest.
•End Automatic Funding: Any program (other than for physical protection of Americans) that Congress has not reauthorized must be suspended for review. Committees must not be permitted to create new programs with automatic funding or that specify minimum funding levels to circumvent the appropriations process.
•Reassert Constitutional Limits: Rather than deferring to courts, Congress must promptly repeal any unconstitutional legislation enacted by previous Congresses, consider the constitutionality of pending bills and assert constitutional limits on the size and scope of government.
•Stop Unnecessary Regulations: Congress must use the Congressional Review Act to stop new and unnecessary regulations. If the President blocks such action, Congress must use appropriations riders to prohibit agencies from adopting such rules.
Conservatives must pay close attention to what this Congress does and be prepared to hold leaders accountable. That is why The Heritage Foundation has created the Solutions for America: Get to Work checklist. Getting Control of Government is one of the five essential tasks Congress must complete to fulfill its electoral mandate. You can download and print all of the “Get to Work” fact sheets and checklist here.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/11/10/morning-bell-get-to-work-getting-control-of-government/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Friday, October 8, 2010
Citizen Link
Law of Economics Wreaking Havoc on Health Care Law
http://www.citizenlink.com/2010/10/law-of-economics-wreaking-havoc-on-health-care-law/
Posted by Catherine Snow
The utopian promises made by President Obama about the health care overhaul are proving –rapidly – to be everything but what was pledged.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently granted 30 large companies – including McDonald’s – special waivers from adhering to certain mandates in the health care law. Positioned by HHS as a step to provide “continuous coverage,” policy watchers call it a move to avoid nearly one million workers from being left without coverage – right before the election.
Philip Klein wrote today on The American Spectator:
“Yet by granting waivers to avert PR nightmares, like the news of McDonald’s dropping coverage, it also adds another disturbing element to the ObamaCare regime. Those companies with the best access and lobbyists are in the best position to be granted a waiver. Bureaucrats can choose to apply a different set of rules to different businesses, and in some cases those rules can determine whether a given business survives. Thus, the waivers themselves are another example of the arbitrary nature of government power.”
MORE CRACKS IN THE LAW
In today’s commentary, “Congress Can’t Repeal Economics,” author and FOX Business Network host John Stossel aptly pointed out that the laws of economics have “struck back.”
“Health insurers Wellpoint, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, and CoventryOne will stop writing policies for all children. Why? Because Obamacare requires that they insure already sick children for the same price as well children.
“That sounds compassionate, but—in case Obamacare fanatics haven’t noticed—sick children need more medical care. Insurance is about risk, and already sick children are 100 percent certain to be sick when their coverage begins. So if the government mandates that insurance companies cover sick children at the lower well-children price, insurers will quit the market rather than sandbag their shareholders. This is not callousness—it’s fiduciary responsibility. Insurance companies are not charities.
“So, thanks to the compassionate Congress and president, parents of sick children will be saved from expensive insurance—by being unable to obtain any insurance! That’s how government compassion works.
“In 2014, the same rule will kick in for adults. You now know what to expect.”
UTOPIA UNRAVELS
After signing health care into law on March 25, Obama went on to chastise Republicans, conservatives and Tea Party participants:
“From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers – they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn’t… this isn’t a government takeover of our health care system.
“They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they’ll be keeping their doctor. You like your plan? You’ll be keeping your plan. No one is taking that away from you…”
However, not every liberal agreed.
Democrat pollsters Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen predicted the Nov. 2 fallout:
“Bluntly put, this is the political reality: First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate’s reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Read John Stossel’s article, “Congress Can’t Repeal Economics.”
http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/07/congress-cant-repeal-economics
http://www.citizenlink.com/2010/10/law-of-economics-wreaking-havoc-on-health-care-law/
Posted by Catherine Snow
The utopian promises made by President Obama about the health care overhaul are proving –rapidly – to be everything but what was pledged.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently granted 30 large companies – including McDonald’s – special waivers from adhering to certain mandates in the health care law. Positioned by HHS as a step to provide “continuous coverage,” policy watchers call it a move to avoid nearly one million workers from being left without coverage – right before the election.
Philip Klein wrote today on The American Spectator:
“Yet by granting waivers to avert PR nightmares, like the news of McDonald’s dropping coverage, it also adds another disturbing element to the ObamaCare regime. Those companies with the best access and lobbyists are in the best position to be granted a waiver. Bureaucrats can choose to apply a different set of rules to different businesses, and in some cases those rules can determine whether a given business survives. Thus, the waivers themselves are another example of the arbitrary nature of government power.”
MORE CRACKS IN THE LAW
In today’s commentary, “Congress Can’t Repeal Economics,” author and FOX Business Network host John Stossel aptly pointed out that the laws of economics have “struck back.”
“Health insurers Wellpoint, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, and CoventryOne will stop writing policies for all children. Why? Because Obamacare requires that they insure already sick children for the same price as well children.
“That sounds compassionate, but—in case Obamacare fanatics haven’t noticed—sick children need more medical care. Insurance is about risk, and already sick children are 100 percent certain to be sick when their coverage begins. So if the government mandates that insurance companies cover sick children at the lower well-children price, insurers will quit the market rather than sandbag their shareholders. This is not callousness—it’s fiduciary responsibility. Insurance companies are not charities.
“So, thanks to the compassionate Congress and president, parents of sick children will be saved from expensive insurance—by being unable to obtain any insurance! That’s how government compassion works.
“In 2014, the same rule will kick in for adults. You now know what to expect.”
UTOPIA UNRAVELS
After signing health care into law on March 25, Obama went on to chastise Republicans, conservatives and Tea Party participants:
“From this day forward, all of the cynics, all the naysayers – they’re going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn’t… this isn’t a government takeover of our health care system.
“They’ll see that if Americans like their doctor, they’ll be keeping their doctor. You like your plan? You’ll be keeping your plan. No one is taking that away from you…”
However, not every liberal agreed.
Democrat pollsters Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen predicted the Nov. 2 fallout:
“Bluntly put, this is the political reality: First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate’s reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Read John Stossel’s article, “Congress Can’t Repeal Economics.”
http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/07/congress-cant-repeal-economics
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Stephen Frank's California Political News and Views
Frank Discussion Not Lecture For Conservatives
http://www.capoliticalnews.com/
Top 10 Failures of ObamaCare After Six Months
September 23, 2010, 07:13 PM
Definitely an article to be passed around to your friends.
San Fran Nan said we would find out what is in the ObamaCare takeover of our health care ONLY when we passed it.
This is what we already know.
1. A few weeks ago drugs that save the lives of breast cancer victims will no longer be allowed--dead women will be the result.
2. Starting today, due to ObamaCare, children will no longer be allowed health insurance policies. That means the children will use Emergency Care at twice the cost, and the bill paid by the taxpayer.
3. " Senior Citizens Suffer from Medicare Cuts: The Medicare Advantage program which covers nearly a quarter of seniors will cut plans from $3-$5,000 per beneficiary. Doctors are refusing to take seniors because Medicare only covers part of their bills." Worse Obama has cut $500 million from Medicare--harming millions of our senior citizens. Yet Democrats complained when the GOP wanted to cut a couple of billion from the program by cutting waste and fraud. They cut half a trillion dollars.
Within the next year the American health care system will collapse under the costs and cuts of Barack Obama and his D.C. friends.
Regime change in November could save our lives and health care. Will you get involved? It is your future.
Read More...http://capoliticalnews.com/blog_post/show/6374
If you enjoy my newsletter, please help my readership grow by passing it around. If some one sent this to you, and you would like your own subscription, you can sign up on my web page at www.capoliticalnews.com
http://www.capoliticalnews.com/
Top 10 Failures of ObamaCare After Six Months
September 23, 2010, 07:13 PM
Definitely an article to be passed around to your friends.
San Fran Nan said we would find out what is in the ObamaCare takeover of our health care ONLY when we passed it.
This is what we already know.
1. A few weeks ago drugs that save the lives of breast cancer victims will no longer be allowed--dead women will be the result.
2. Starting today, due to ObamaCare, children will no longer be allowed health insurance policies. That means the children will use Emergency Care at twice the cost, and the bill paid by the taxpayer.
3. " Senior Citizens Suffer from Medicare Cuts: The Medicare Advantage program which covers nearly a quarter of seniors will cut plans from $3-$5,000 per beneficiary. Doctors are refusing to take seniors because Medicare only covers part of their bills." Worse Obama has cut $500 million from Medicare--harming millions of our senior citizens. Yet Democrats complained when the GOP wanted to cut a couple of billion from the program by cutting waste and fraud. They cut half a trillion dollars.
Within the next year the American health care system will collapse under the costs and cuts of Barack Obama and his D.C. friends.
Regime change in November could save our lives and health care. Will you get involved? It is your future.
Read More...http://capoliticalnews.com/blog_post/show/6374
If you enjoy my newsletter, please help my readership grow by passing it around. If some one sent this to you, and you would like your own subscription, you can sign up on my web page at www.capoliticalnews.com
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
GAO Finds Sebelius Misleading Taxpayers on Health Reform
For those on Medicare or have family and friends on Medicare, please read! Make sure you link to the article, referenced links and the GAO report B-319834, September 9, 2010.
September 10, 2010 11:04
GAO Finds Sebelius Misleading Taxpayers on Health Reform
by Elizabeth MacDonald
The Government Accountability Office says a Medicare mailer sent out by Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, to Medicare recipients on the new health-care law isn’t accurate.
In fact, according to the GAO, the brochure, which cost $18 million in taxpayer dollars to publish and emanated from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presented a view of the health reform law that is “not universally shared,” that it “overstated the benefits” of health reform,” and that it failed to note the possibility of less generous Medicare benefits and higher costs.
While the GAO cleared the administration of putting together a purely partisan or propagandizing brochure, it was nonetheless critical of its content.
Is this Sebelius brochure good use of nearly $20 million in taxpayer money?
Prior to press, Fox Business reached out to HHS for its response to the GAO report. After the story appeared on the FBN website, HHS emailed this statement: "The GAO report confirms what we have been saying all along. The Medicare brochure is a critical tool to inform Medicare beneficiaries and their families about how the Affordable Care Act affects them." The statement concludes by saying that the GAO report "confirms that it [the brochure] is not partisan and is not propaganda."
The irony is rich. Almost a year to the day, Humana, one of the biggest private insurers offering richer Medicare plans to the elderly, sent out a letter last September warning senior citizens that a government revamp of health insurance could eliminate their benefits.
An official with a unit of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services then sent the insurer a threatening letter instructing Humana that it was now under investigation, that it must “end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries” and that it must “remove any related materials” from its website, adding, “please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions.”
That letter set off an explosive fight in Congress, with Democrats Sen. Max Baucus and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the one side and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell on the other.
Representatives David Camp (R-Mich.) and Wally Herger (R-Calif.) had asked the GAO to determine whether the HHS brochure violated publicity or propaganda prohibitions in federal law.
In the brochure, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, says the handout provides taxpayers with “accurate” information about “new services and benefits” under health reform.
Specifically, in a section entitled "What Stays the Same," Sebelius advises taxpayers that "[t]he guaranteed Medicare benefits you currently receive will remain the same,” that reform “preserves and strengthens Medicare," makes "improvements," and creates "new benefits."
But the GAO says those statements are misleading and are overstatements.
For example, the GAO says the brochure fails to note that reform actually delivers cuts to the Medicare program, increases Medicare prescription premiums, and cuts payment to doctors.
The GAO also says the Sebelius brochure made misleading statements about health reform making “improvements” to Medicare Advantage, and that the brochure does not cite the $123 billion in estimated cuts over a ten-year period to Medicare Advantage, which provides services beyond regular Medicare offerings. Medicare Advantage is the private options that about one in five Medicare beneficiaries enroll in.
And the GAO says the brochure fails to note that “two government analyses have determined that [health reform] reductions in funding for Medicare Advantage may decrease enrollment and result in less generous benefit packages.”
The GAO also says the brochure misleadingly tells Medicare recipients that health reform "increases the number of primary care doctors, nurses, and physician assistants" enrolled in Medicare, when in fact, reform only provides incentives for those doctors to voluntarily join or stay in Medicare.
The GAO also says the brochure misleadingly refers to new programs as being available for Medicare recipients, when they are not eligible for these offerings.
A spokesman for the GAO says the report "confirms what we have been saying all along. The Medicare brochure is a critical tool to inform Medicare beneficiaries and their families about how the Affordable Care Act affects them and remind them to be on the alert for any scams asking for personal information. Today's GAO report confirms that it is not partisan and is not propaganda."
In a section called “Improvements beyond Medicare that you and your family can count on,” Sebelius’s brochure notes that under the new health reform law, children up to age 26 can stay on their parents plan. But the GAO says that section is misleading, as Medicare beneficiaries “are likely to be ineligible” for that offering, meaning, their children can’t get Medicare benefits.
And in that same section, the Sebelius brochure also cites a new long-term care insurance program that requires enrollees to work while paying premiums. But the GAO says that, again, Medicare beneficiaries “are likely to be ineligible” for that offering.
The GAO also says the brochure fails to acknowledge what the 2010 Medicare Trustees Report says, “that while the financial outlook for the Medicare program is substantially improved as a result of” reform, “the feasibility of long-range improvements is still uncertain, and significant increases in premiums for some beneficiaries may be necessary.”
The Sebelius brochure also states that reform will "ensure accountability throughout the health care system,” but the GAO report says it “does not guarantee it.”
Similarly, the brochure notes that health reform "reduces payment errors, waste, fraud, and abuse,” but again the GAO says those reductions are not guaranteed.
And the GAO says the brochure makes other “overstatements of information” on health reform, including that "[i]nsurance companies will be prohibited from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition for children starting in September, and for adults in 2014," when in fact the new law “does not apply to all health plans,” and that “a subset of health plans-grandfathered individual health insurance plans-are exempt” from restrictions on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.
http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/09/10/gao-finds-sebelius-misleading-taxpayers-health-reform#ixzz0zHBBeNyK
September 10, 2010 11:04
GAO Finds Sebelius Misleading Taxpayers on Health Reform
by Elizabeth MacDonald
The Government Accountability Office says a Medicare mailer sent out by Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, to Medicare recipients on the new health-care law isn’t accurate.
In fact, according to the GAO, the brochure, which cost $18 million in taxpayer dollars to publish and emanated from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presented a view of the health reform law that is “not universally shared,” that it “overstated the benefits” of health reform,” and that it failed to note the possibility of less generous Medicare benefits and higher costs.
While the GAO cleared the administration of putting together a purely partisan or propagandizing brochure, it was nonetheless critical of its content.
Is this Sebelius brochure good use of nearly $20 million in taxpayer money?
Prior to press, Fox Business reached out to HHS for its response to the GAO report. After the story appeared on the FBN website, HHS emailed this statement: "The GAO report confirms what we have been saying all along. The Medicare brochure is a critical tool to inform Medicare beneficiaries and their families about how the Affordable Care Act affects them." The statement concludes by saying that the GAO report "confirms that it [the brochure] is not partisan and is not propaganda."
The irony is rich. Almost a year to the day, Humana, one of the biggest private insurers offering richer Medicare plans to the elderly, sent out a letter last September warning senior citizens that a government revamp of health insurance could eliminate their benefits.
An official with a unit of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services then sent the insurer a threatening letter instructing Humana that it was now under investigation, that it must “end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries” and that it must “remove any related materials” from its website, adding, “please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions.”
That letter set off an explosive fight in Congress, with Democrats Sen. Max Baucus and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the one side and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell on the other.
Representatives David Camp (R-Mich.) and Wally Herger (R-Calif.) had asked the GAO to determine whether the HHS brochure violated publicity or propaganda prohibitions in federal law.
In the brochure, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, says the handout provides taxpayers with “accurate” information about “new services and benefits” under health reform.
Specifically, in a section entitled "What Stays the Same," Sebelius advises taxpayers that "[t]he guaranteed Medicare benefits you currently receive will remain the same,” that reform “preserves and strengthens Medicare," makes "improvements," and creates "new benefits."
But the GAO says those statements are misleading and are overstatements.
For example, the GAO says the brochure fails to note that reform actually delivers cuts to the Medicare program, increases Medicare prescription premiums, and cuts payment to doctors.
The GAO also says the Sebelius brochure made misleading statements about health reform making “improvements” to Medicare Advantage, and that the brochure does not cite the $123 billion in estimated cuts over a ten-year period to Medicare Advantage, which provides services beyond regular Medicare offerings. Medicare Advantage is the private options that about one in five Medicare beneficiaries enroll in.
And the GAO says the brochure fails to note that “two government analyses have determined that [health reform] reductions in funding for Medicare Advantage may decrease enrollment and result in less generous benefit packages.”
The GAO also says the brochure misleadingly tells Medicare recipients that health reform "increases the number of primary care doctors, nurses, and physician assistants" enrolled in Medicare, when in fact, reform only provides incentives for those doctors to voluntarily join or stay in Medicare.
The GAO also says the brochure misleadingly refers to new programs as being available for Medicare recipients, when they are not eligible for these offerings.
A spokesman for the GAO says the report "confirms what we have been saying all along. The Medicare brochure is a critical tool to inform Medicare beneficiaries and their families about how the Affordable Care Act affects them and remind them to be on the alert for any scams asking for personal information. Today's GAO report confirms that it is not partisan and is not propaganda."
In a section called “Improvements beyond Medicare that you and your family can count on,” Sebelius’s brochure notes that under the new health reform law, children up to age 26 can stay on their parents plan. But the GAO says that section is misleading, as Medicare beneficiaries “are likely to be ineligible” for that offering, meaning, their children can’t get Medicare benefits.
And in that same section, the Sebelius brochure also cites a new long-term care insurance program that requires enrollees to work while paying premiums. But the GAO says that, again, Medicare beneficiaries “are likely to be ineligible” for that offering.
The GAO also says the brochure fails to acknowledge what the 2010 Medicare Trustees Report says, “that while the financial outlook for the Medicare program is substantially improved as a result of” reform, “the feasibility of long-range improvements is still uncertain, and significant increases in premiums for some beneficiaries may be necessary.”
The Sebelius brochure also states that reform will "ensure accountability throughout the health care system,” but the GAO report says it “does not guarantee it.”
Similarly, the brochure notes that health reform "reduces payment errors, waste, fraud, and abuse,” but again the GAO says those reductions are not guaranteed.
And the GAO says the brochure makes other “overstatements of information” on health reform, including that "[i]nsurance companies will be prohibited from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition for children starting in September, and for adults in 2014," when in fact the new law “does not apply to all health plans,” and that “a subset of health plans-grandfathered individual health insurance plans-are exempt” from restrictions on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.
http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/09/10/gao-finds-sebelius-misleading-taxpayers-health-reform#ixzz0zHBBeNyK
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Many businesses will owe more in taxes than they make in profits
'Obama's Beltway Chainsaw Massacre'
Michelle Malkin examines toll hope and change is taking on job market
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4321114/obamas-beltway-chainsaw-massacre/?playlist_id=86858
Michelle Malkin examines toll hope and change is taking on job market
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4321114/obamas-beltway-chainsaw-massacre/?playlist_id=86858
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Obamacare
The Obamacare Disaster Escalating
By Peter Ferrara on 8.18.10 @ 6:10AM
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/18/the-obamacare-disaster
Forthcoming for public release shortly will be my extensive study of the Obamacare legislation, “The Obamacare Disaster: An Appraisal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (Heartland Policy StudyNo. 128, The Heartland Institute, August 2010), available shortly at the Heartland Institute website. Following Nancy Pelosi’s dictum that we will have to pass it first to know what’s in it, I personally slogged through the thousands of pages of this legislative atrocity for the study, as well as thousands of pages of supplemental materials such as government, think tank and media reports.
The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false. This pattern of calculated deception, however, did not fool the American people, only members of Congress, many of whom will now pay with their jobs as a result.
But the study is not all gloom and doom. It thoroughly explains the Patient Power reforms that should replace it when it is repealed, drawing on the broad scholarship of the Patient Power movement and its intellectual leaders, such as John Goodman, Grace Marie Turner, Sally Pipes, Merrill Mathews, and Greg Scandlen, among others. It consequently serves as a guidebook for the grassroots Tea Party activists who will lead the long-term crusade for Health Care Liberation.
The Government Takeover of Health Care
Contrary to President Obama’s rhetoric, the Obamacare legislation involves precisely the thorough government takeover of health care. It creates 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions, and programs to rule over health care in America. Government authorities are empowered to tell doctors and hospitals what is quality health care and what is not, what are best practices in medicine, how their medical practices should be structured, and what they will be paid and when. Government authorities will mandate exactly what health insurance with what benefits workers and employers must buy, and the Act imposes tax penalties on them if they do not comply. Government authorities will dictate to insurance companies exactly what health insurance they must sell, to whom they must sell it, and what they can charge. Obamacare even redistributes premium income among insurers under a new “risk adjustment” mechanism.
But this is just the beginning. As in everything President Obama is doing, it lays the groundwork for much more thorough government control and compulsion over time, primarily through bureaucratic landmines involving grants of regulatory authority that will explode when the bureaucracy thinks it can get away with it politically. Among the biggest targets here will be doctors and hospitals, which over time will become complete vassals of the regulatory, bureaucratic state Obamacare establishes.
Higher Health Care Costs
President Obama promised while campaigning for his health reform legislation that it would reduce the “growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government,” in particular by reducing the cost of health insurance by $2,500 per family. But the Obamacare legislation will have just the opposite effect, sharply increasing health costs for families, businesses, and government.
Higher costs for government start with the expansion of the Medicaid entitlement, which was already slated to cost $5 trillion over the next 10 years. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that Obamacare will increase Medicaid enrollment by 24 million new beneficiaries by 2015, adding an additional $410 billion in further federal costs for the program over the next decade alone.
Obamacare increases costs for the federal government further by adopting a massive new health insurance entitlement program for families earning up to four times the poverty level. In 2014, this new program will be providing $3,000 in taxpayer funds to families making $95,000. By 2018, almost $5,000 will be going to families making $102,000. CBO estimates that these subsidies will cost taxpayers an additional $457 billion over the first six years alone, through 2019. The Chief Actuary of Medicare estimates the total cost of this new entitlement will reach over $500 billion over the first six years. This is only the beginning, as this program will ultimately cost far more than now projected.
This is a massive increase in welfare extended to middle and upper-income families, irresponsibly added on top of the runaway, financially intractable entitlement promises we have already made. But Obamacare then adds a third new entitlement program, for long term nursing home care.
For the rest of us, Obamacare will sharply increase insurance costs. That starts with the mandates forcing everyone into comprehensive insurance coverage specified by the government, which will maximize the incentives for overconsumption of health care, to be paid for through the insurance. Then there are all of President Obama’s free new benefits now mandated, such as coverage for alcohol and drug abuse rehab, mental health services, preventive care, maternity benefits for single males and postmenopausal adults, and the elimination of all lifetime limits and caps. Free mandatory benefits raise health insurance costs.
Additional regulatory burdens will further increase costs. The guaranteed issue requirements force insurers to issue new policies to anyone who applies regardless of how sick they are, and the community rating requirements prohibit charging them more because of their illnesses. These requirements, which are just like forcing fire insurers to issue new policies to applicants whose houses are already on fire when they call, at regular rates, raise the costs of health insurance sharply for everyone else.
Two new taxes on health insurance, the Cadillac tax for supposedly high value insurance that will apply to more and more plans every year, and another tax on all health insurance from the start, will add nearly $100 billion to health insurance costs over the next 10 years alone. Then there will be sharply increased cost shifting to private health insurance due to the massive expansion of Medicaid to 24 million more people, and the more than massive Medicare cuts discussed below, as doctors and hospitals try to recoup their enormous losses by charging more to privately insured patients.
Counting just some of these cost increases, one study concludes that under Obamacare a typical family health insurance policy costing $12,300 today will cost $17,200 by 2013, $21,300 by 2016, and $25,900 by 2019. Another study concludes that insurance costs for young (up to 40) and healthy workers will double and triple in many cases.
These cost increases have already begun. But expect the liberal/left to insist that the soaring insurance costs caused by Obamacare prove that the public option, or even more overt socialized medicine, was needed after all. They will seek to prohibit the necessary premium increases, as in Massachusetts, and will be glad if that forces private insurers out of business.
Death Panels
While the liberal/left hides behind literal clowns mocking Sarah Palin for raising the issue of death panels under Obamacare, the legislation as passed documents the essential reality of the charge.
The recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees reveals that the Medicare payment rates for the doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next 3 years. By 2019, those Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. The Chief Actuary for Medicare reports that ultimately under Obamacare Medicare payment rates will be only one third of what will be paid by private insurance and only half of what is paid by Medicaid, where the poor often can’t find access to essential care.
Still further Medicare cuts adopted in the Obamacare legislation add up altogether to $818 billion over the first 10 years of full implementation, 2014-2023, and $3.223 trillion over the first 20 years, 2014-2033, for Medicare Part A (HI) alone! Adding in the cuts for Medicare Part B brings the total to $1.048 trillion over the first 10 full years, and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 full years. Eventually, as documented in the government’s own reports, Medicare Part A is cut by 60% per year, Part B by 43%!
These draconian cuts for doctors and hospitals providing the health care to seniors under Medicare were the basis for the CBO score repeatedly cited by President Obama that Obamacare would actually reduce the deficit while expanding or adopting three entitlement programs. This doesn’t even include the further cuts to Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to Medicare which nearly 25% of seniors have chosen for their Medicare coverage because it gives them a better deal, and the further automatic Medicare cuts to be adopted by the unelected, appointed, bureaucrats at the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board under Obamacare.
Such draconian Medicare cuts would create havoc and chaos in health care for seniors. Doctors, hospitals, surgeons and specialists providing critical care to the elderly such as surgery for hip and knee replacements, sophisticated diagnostics through MRIs and CT scans, and even treatment for cancer and heart disease will shut down and disappear in much of the country, and others will stop serving Medicare patients. If the government is not going to pay, then seniors are not going to get the health services, treatment and care they expect. Indeed, the Medicare Chief Actuary reports that even before these cuts already two-thirds of hospitals were losing money on Medicare patients. Health providers will either have to withdraw from serving Medicare patients, or eventually go into bankruptcy.
Apparently, President Obama’s concept of spreading the wealth includes sacking the Medicare system on which America’s seniors have come to rely for highly beneficial medical care, in favor of others who the Obama/Pelosi/Reid progressive vision deems more worthy.
As the government clamps down on private insurers as well as on payments from Medicare and Medicaid, the incentives for essential investment to maintain current facilities, expand and open new ones, and invest in and build out new innovations and breakthroughs, will be eviscerated. Investment in human capital as well as physical capital in health care will plummet, as doctors and other professionals increasingly flee health care. This effective decline in the supply of health care in the face of increasing demand will mean even higher prices and costs.
The study further explains how several provisions of Obamacare give insurers, doctors, and hospitals incentives to deny and ration health care to patients. A central component of the traditional high standard of living in America has been the best, most advanced, cutting edge health care in the world. No more. Obamacare is part of the declining standard of living for America.
America’s Coming Bankruptcy
When he was campaigning for Obamacare, President Obama insisted on national television that the mandate to buy insurance was not a tax. Now that it has passed, his lawyers are in court arguing that it is constitutional because it is a tax.
The mandate to buy insurance is economically, though not legally, indistinguishable from a tax. Even with the budget-crushing new entitlement subsidies in the Act, the insurance will be quite expensive, ranging up to 2 percent of income for people at 133 percent of poverty to 9.8 percent of income for people at 400 percent of poverty. That is like a new payroll tax, breaking two Obama pledges, since it applies just as well to those making less than $250,000 a year.
The study recounts at least 13 tax increases in Obamacare, adding up to at least $500 billion over the first 10 years, not counting the mandates. But that won’t begin to cover all of the spending involved in Obamacare, adding up to more than $2.4 trillion over the first 10 years of full implementation, from 2014 to 2024, and $5.3 trillion over the first 15 full years.
That will further explode the deficit and national debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years. A major fallacy of the CBO score of Obamacare is that it assumes that only 19 million workers will qualify for the new Obamacare health insurance subsidies described above. In fact, as former CBO Chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin explains, under the incentives Obamacare provides employers to dump their health coverage, at least 43 million are likely to qualify. It could be 2 to 3 times as many, exploding original cost projections beyond imagination. The study explains other factors that will cause higher Obamacare spending and deficits. This would only follow the Medicare precedent, which was originally projected in 1965 to cost $12 trillion by 1990. But when 1990 came, it cost $109.7 billion, 9 times greater.
Patient Power v. Government Power
America does need to ensure that it maintains a health care safety net assuring that no one suffers due to lack of essential health care. But that can be accomplished without any of the big-government components of Obamacare. Indeed, done right, it can be accomplished while expanding the power and control of workers and patients over their own health care and actually reducing rather than enlarging government’s role in health care.
That would begin by repealing all 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions and programs created by Obamacare, and the rest of the legislative atrocity, reducing taxes and spending by the amounts described above, and the federal deficits and debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years.
The next step would be to block grant Medicaid back to the states following the model of the hugely successful 1996 reforms of the old AFDC program. That would greatly benefit the poor, freeing them from the Medicaid ghetto to enjoy the same health insurance as the middle class. That would include the choice of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), maximizing patient power and control, and market incentives to control costs. Medicare should be reformed to empower all seniors with a Medicare Advantage choice, including the highly beneficial HSAs.
A true health care safety net ensuring essential health care for all can be achieved with state high risk pools, and consumer choice tax credits, ensuring affordability and access to health insurance for everyone. The study explains as well market consumer protection laws prohibiting insurance company fraud, and deregulation enabling a national market competition to truly control costs.
Because of all of the problems created by Obamacare, the misshapen legislation is just the beginning, not the end, of the battle to reform health care policy in America. Obamacare is so fundamentally wrong-headed that it takes us in the opposite direction of the essential reforms that are needed. Perhaps such a disastrously wrong step was necessary to draw the public’s attention to the true patient power reforms that would liberate health care in America.
By Peter Ferrara on 8.18.10 @ 6:10AM
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/18/the-obamacare-disaster
Forthcoming for public release shortly will be my extensive study of the Obamacare legislation, “The Obamacare Disaster: An Appraisal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (Heartland Policy StudyNo. 128, The Heartland Institute, August 2010), available shortly at the Heartland Institute website. Following Nancy Pelosi’s dictum that we will have to pass it first to know what’s in it, I personally slogged through the thousands of pages of this legislative atrocity for the study, as well as thousands of pages of supplemental materials such as government, think tank and media reports.
The bottom line is that you will lose your health care under this legislation, if not your job, your country as they bankrupt America, and maybe ultimately your life or the life of a loved one. All that to make dreamy, emotionalized, liberals happy, even though many of them are not happy because the socialism in the bill is not overt enough. Moreover, the promises made to the American people to pass the bill are shown in the study to be thoroughly false. This pattern of calculated deception, however, did not fool the American people, only members of Congress, many of whom will now pay with their jobs as a result.
But the study is not all gloom and doom. It thoroughly explains the Patient Power reforms that should replace it when it is repealed, drawing on the broad scholarship of the Patient Power movement and its intellectual leaders, such as John Goodman, Grace Marie Turner, Sally Pipes, Merrill Mathews, and Greg Scandlen, among others. It consequently serves as a guidebook for the grassroots Tea Party activists who will lead the long-term crusade for Health Care Liberation.
The Government Takeover of Health Care
Contrary to President Obama’s rhetoric, the Obamacare legislation involves precisely the thorough government takeover of health care. It creates 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions, and programs to rule over health care in America. Government authorities are empowered to tell doctors and hospitals what is quality health care and what is not, what are best practices in medicine, how their medical practices should be structured, and what they will be paid and when. Government authorities will mandate exactly what health insurance with what benefits workers and employers must buy, and the Act imposes tax penalties on them if they do not comply. Government authorities will dictate to insurance companies exactly what health insurance they must sell, to whom they must sell it, and what they can charge. Obamacare even redistributes premium income among insurers under a new “risk adjustment” mechanism.
But this is just the beginning. As in everything President Obama is doing, it lays the groundwork for much more thorough government control and compulsion over time, primarily through bureaucratic landmines involving grants of regulatory authority that will explode when the bureaucracy thinks it can get away with it politically. Among the biggest targets here will be doctors and hospitals, which over time will become complete vassals of the regulatory, bureaucratic state Obamacare establishes.
Higher Health Care Costs
President Obama promised while campaigning for his health reform legislation that it would reduce the “growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government,” in particular by reducing the cost of health insurance by $2,500 per family. But the Obamacare legislation will have just the opposite effect, sharply increasing health costs for families, businesses, and government.
Higher costs for government start with the expansion of the Medicaid entitlement, which was already slated to cost $5 trillion over the next 10 years. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates that Obamacare will increase Medicaid enrollment by 24 million new beneficiaries by 2015, adding an additional $410 billion in further federal costs for the program over the next decade alone.
Obamacare increases costs for the federal government further by adopting a massive new health insurance entitlement program for families earning up to four times the poverty level. In 2014, this new program will be providing $3,000 in taxpayer funds to families making $95,000. By 2018, almost $5,000 will be going to families making $102,000. CBO estimates that these subsidies will cost taxpayers an additional $457 billion over the first six years alone, through 2019. The Chief Actuary of Medicare estimates the total cost of this new entitlement will reach over $500 billion over the first six years. This is only the beginning, as this program will ultimately cost far more than now projected.
This is a massive increase in welfare extended to middle and upper-income families, irresponsibly added on top of the runaway, financially intractable entitlement promises we have already made. But Obamacare then adds a third new entitlement program, for long term nursing home care.
For the rest of us, Obamacare will sharply increase insurance costs. That starts with the mandates forcing everyone into comprehensive insurance coverage specified by the government, which will maximize the incentives for overconsumption of health care, to be paid for through the insurance. Then there are all of President Obama’s free new benefits now mandated, such as coverage for alcohol and drug abuse rehab, mental health services, preventive care, maternity benefits for single males and postmenopausal adults, and the elimination of all lifetime limits and caps. Free mandatory benefits raise health insurance costs.
Additional regulatory burdens will further increase costs. The guaranteed issue requirements force insurers to issue new policies to anyone who applies regardless of how sick they are, and the community rating requirements prohibit charging them more because of their illnesses. These requirements, which are just like forcing fire insurers to issue new policies to applicants whose houses are already on fire when they call, at regular rates, raise the costs of health insurance sharply for everyone else.
Two new taxes on health insurance, the Cadillac tax for supposedly high value insurance that will apply to more and more plans every year, and another tax on all health insurance from the start, will add nearly $100 billion to health insurance costs over the next 10 years alone. Then there will be sharply increased cost shifting to private health insurance due to the massive expansion of Medicaid to 24 million more people, and the more than massive Medicare cuts discussed below, as doctors and hospitals try to recoup their enormous losses by charging more to privately insured patients.
Counting just some of these cost increases, one study concludes that under Obamacare a typical family health insurance policy costing $12,300 today will cost $17,200 by 2013, $21,300 by 2016, and $25,900 by 2019. Another study concludes that insurance costs for young (up to 40) and healthy workers will double and triple in many cases.
These cost increases have already begun. But expect the liberal/left to insist that the soaring insurance costs caused by Obamacare prove that the public option, or even more overt socialized medicine, was needed after all. They will seek to prohibit the necessary premium increases, as in Massachusetts, and will be glad if that forces private insurers out of business.
Death Panels
While the liberal/left hides behind literal clowns mocking Sarah Palin for raising the issue of death panels under Obamacare, the legislation as passed documents the essential reality of the charge.
The recently released Annual Report of the Medicare Board of Trustees reveals that the Medicare payment rates for the doctors and hospitals serving seniors will be cut by 30% over the next 3 years. By 2019, those Medicare payment rates will be lower than under Medicaid. The Chief Actuary for Medicare reports that ultimately under Obamacare Medicare payment rates will be only one third of what will be paid by private insurance and only half of what is paid by Medicaid, where the poor often can’t find access to essential care.
Still further Medicare cuts adopted in the Obamacare legislation add up altogether to $818 billion over the first 10 years of full implementation, 2014-2023, and $3.223 trillion over the first 20 years, 2014-2033, for Medicare Part A (HI) alone! Adding in the cuts for Medicare Part B brings the total to $1.048 trillion over the first 10 full years, and $4.95 trillion over the first 20 full years. Eventually, as documented in the government’s own reports, Medicare Part A is cut by 60% per year, Part B by 43%!
These draconian cuts for doctors and hospitals providing the health care to seniors under Medicare were the basis for the CBO score repeatedly cited by President Obama that Obamacare would actually reduce the deficit while expanding or adopting three entitlement programs. This doesn’t even include the further cuts to Medicare Advantage, the private alternative to Medicare which nearly 25% of seniors have chosen for their Medicare coverage because it gives them a better deal, and the further automatic Medicare cuts to be adopted by the unelected, appointed, bureaucrats at the Medicare Independent Payment Advisory Board under Obamacare.
Such draconian Medicare cuts would create havoc and chaos in health care for seniors. Doctors, hospitals, surgeons and specialists providing critical care to the elderly such as surgery for hip and knee replacements, sophisticated diagnostics through MRIs and CT scans, and even treatment for cancer and heart disease will shut down and disappear in much of the country, and others will stop serving Medicare patients. If the government is not going to pay, then seniors are not going to get the health services, treatment and care they expect. Indeed, the Medicare Chief Actuary reports that even before these cuts already two-thirds of hospitals were losing money on Medicare patients. Health providers will either have to withdraw from serving Medicare patients, or eventually go into bankruptcy.
Apparently, President Obama’s concept of spreading the wealth includes sacking the Medicare system on which America’s seniors have come to rely for highly beneficial medical care, in favor of others who the Obama/Pelosi/Reid progressive vision deems more worthy.
As the government clamps down on private insurers as well as on payments from Medicare and Medicaid, the incentives for essential investment to maintain current facilities, expand and open new ones, and invest in and build out new innovations and breakthroughs, will be eviscerated. Investment in human capital as well as physical capital in health care will plummet, as doctors and other professionals increasingly flee health care. This effective decline in the supply of health care in the face of increasing demand will mean even higher prices and costs.
The study further explains how several provisions of Obamacare give insurers, doctors, and hospitals incentives to deny and ration health care to patients. A central component of the traditional high standard of living in America has been the best, most advanced, cutting edge health care in the world. No more. Obamacare is part of the declining standard of living for America.
America’s Coming Bankruptcy
When he was campaigning for Obamacare, President Obama insisted on national television that the mandate to buy insurance was not a tax. Now that it has passed, his lawyers are in court arguing that it is constitutional because it is a tax.
The mandate to buy insurance is economically, though not legally, indistinguishable from a tax. Even with the budget-crushing new entitlement subsidies in the Act, the insurance will be quite expensive, ranging up to 2 percent of income for people at 133 percent of poverty to 9.8 percent of income for people at 400 percent of poverty. That is like a new payroll tax, breaking two Obama pledges, since it applies just as well to those making less than $250,000 a year.
The study recounts at least 13 tax increases in Obamacare, adding up to at least $500 billion over the first 10 years, not counting the mandates. But that won’t begin to cover all of the spending involved in Obamacare, adding up to more than $2.4 trillion over the first 10 years of full implementation, from 2014 to 2024, and $5.3 trillion over the first 15 full years.
That will further explode the deficit and national debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years. A major fallacy of the CBO score of Obamacare is that it assumes that only 19 million workers will qualify for the new Obamacare health insurance subsidies described above. In fact, as former CBO Chief Douglas Holtz-Eakin explains, under the incentives Obamacare provides employers to dump their health coverage, at least 43 million are likely to qualify. It could be 2 to 3 times as many, exploding original cost projections beyond imagination. The study explains other factors that will cause higher Obamacare spending and deficits. This would only follow the Medicare precedent, which was originally projected in 1965 to cost $12 trillion by 1990. But when 1990 came, it cost $109.7 billion, 9 times greater.
Patient Power v. Government Power
America does need to ensure that it maintains a health care safety net assuring that no one suffers due to lack of essential health care. But that can be accomplished without any of the big-government components of Obamacare. Indeed, done right, it can be accomplished while expanding the power and control of workers and patients over their own health care and actually reducing rather than enlarging government’s role in health care.
That would begin by repealing all 159 new bureaucracies, agencies, boards, commissions and programs created by Obamacare, and the rest of the legislative atrocity, reducing taxes and spending by the amounts described above, and the federal deficits and debt by at least $2 to $3 trillion over the next 20 years.
The next step would be to block grant Medicaid back to the states following the model of the hugely successful 1996 reforms of the old AFDC program. That would greatly benefit the poor, freeing them from the Medicaid ghetto to enjoy the same health insurance as the middle class. That would include the choice of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), maximizing patient power and control, and market incentives to control costs. Medicare should be reformed to empower all seniors with a Medicare Advantage choice, including the highly beneficial HSAs.
A true health care safety net ensuring essential health care for all can be achieved with state high risk pools, and consumer choice tax credits, ensuring affordability and access to health insurance for everyone. The study explains as well market consumer protection laws prohibiting insurance company fraud, and deregulation enabling a national market competition to truly control costs.
Because of all of the problems created by Obamacare, the misshapen legislation is just the beginning, not the end, of the battle to reform health care policy in America. Obamacare is so fundamentally wrong-headed that it takes us in the opposite direction of the essential reforms that are needed. Perhaps such a disastrously wrong step was necessary to draw the public’s attention to the true patient power reforms that would liberate health care in America.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Furious Parent Blasts Senator Kay Hagan Over Health Care --
VIDEO ALERT!!! Furious Parent Blasts Senator Kay Hagan Over Health Care --
http://randysright.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/video-alertfurious-parent-blasts-senator-kay-hagan-over-health-care/
http://randysright.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/video-alertfurious-parent-blasts-senator-kay-hagan-over-health-care/
Monday, July 5, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
The Cloward-Piven Plan ... How to Overwhelm the System
by WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Overwhelm the system
Barach Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -- thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.
Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.
-- Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn't care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
-- Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama's biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama "spread the wealth around."
-- Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who's asking for a 51st state? Who's asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama's plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.
-- Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.
-- Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues). All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America. The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful. The ends justify the means.
-- Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama). Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition.
With the acts outlined above, Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system.
Add it up and you've got the perfect Marxist scheme -- all devised by my Columbia University college classmate Barack Obama using the Cloward and Piven Plan.
Barach Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos -- thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.
Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of '83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival ... and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.
-- Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn't care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
-- Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama's biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama "spread the wealth around."
-- Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who's asking for a 51st state? Who's asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama's plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.
-- Legalize 12 million illegal immigrants. Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free health care alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.
-- Stimulus and bailouts. Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIG so that Goldman Sachs could be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues). All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America. The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful. The ends justify the means.
-- Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama). Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition.
With the acts outlined above, Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system.
Add it up and you've got the perfect Marxist scheme -- all devised by my Columbia University college classmate Barack Obama using the Cloward and Piven Plan.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Rx on Obamacare: Don't get sick | Washington Examiner
Rx on Obamacare: Don't get sick Washington Examiner
Economic experts from President Obama's own Health and Human Services Department have released a devastating report noting that Obamacare "will increase national health care spending by $311 billion from 2010-2019," according to the Associated Press. Even worse, "Medicare cuts may be unrealistic and unsustainable, driving about 15 percent of hospitals into the red and 'possibly jeopardizing access' to care for seniors." In other words, to recall the words of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Congress had to pass the bill before we could begin discovering what's in it. And what we are finding is frequently the opposite of what Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic advocates told us. Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Rx-on-Obamacare_-Don_t-get-sick-92050239.html#ixzz0mDKewjmI
Economic experts from President Obama's own Health and Human Services Department have released a devastating report noting that Obamacare "will increase national health care spending by $311 billion from 2010-2019," according to the Associated Press. Even worse, "Medicare cuts may be unrealistic and unsustainable, driving about 15 percent of hospitals into the red and 'possibly jeopardizing access' to care for seniors." In other words, to recall the words of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Congress had to pass the bill before we could begin discovering what's in it. And what we are finding is frequently the opposite of what Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic advocates told us. Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Rx-on-Obamacare_-Don_t-get-sick-92050239.html#ixzz0mDKewjmI
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Tea Parties vs. Socialist Redistributionists
Tea Parties vs. Socialist Redistributionists
April 12, 2010 by Bob Livingston
Although President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and their elite socialistic foot soldiers cast it in pleasant, humanitarian terms as a means of providing healthcare to those who couldn’t otherwise afford it, the majority of Americans recognized Obamacare for what it was: a transfer of wealth to Big Pharma, trial lawyers, unions and other special interests and a power grab over society’s producers.
Hence, the growth of the Tea Party movement across the United States.
The Tea Party took root early in 2009 in response to the massive government spending policies and takeover of two-thirds of the American automobile industry and all of the financial industry by the redistributionists—carrying both the Democrat and Republican labels—seeking to turn America into Karl Marx’s dream state. The Tea Party grew stronger and louder as Obama—the Liar-in-Chief—denied his socialistic tendencies and looked down on them with an arrogant disdain and dismissiveness.
Tea Partiers found their voices as 2009 turned into 2010 and the power grab reached its zenith when Obama’s dream came true and the House and Senate overrode the will of the majority of Americans and passed into law Obamacare on March 21. They turned out by the thousands in Washington, D.C., that day and the day before—traveling there from all over the country on a couple of days notice—to protest, and those who couldn’t go flooded the Capitol switchboard with calls and the Capitol email servers with correspondence.
The arrogant elitists who occupy Washington, D.C., laughed in the faces of the Tea Partiers once the passage of Obamacare was assured. Pelosi grabbed her gavel and, along with a group of her lackeys, marched boldly through the crowd of Tea Party protesters on the day the voting began, hoping above hope to incite some incident that would allow them to paint the protesters as radicals and racists.
When no one took the bait the arrogant elitists made up an incident, with one congressman saying he was slurred by a racial epithet from Tea Partiers and another claiming he was spat upon. Despite those claims no arrests were made, no video or audio evidence of any slurs have turned up and the congressman who claims spittle flew his way was unable to make any kind of identification of a culprit. And Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 reward to the United Negro College Fund for evidence of a slur remains unclaimed.
Capitol police escorting the group of elected elitists through the crowd of Tea Party peasants saw no evidence of anything untoward and sensed no danger for those they were charged with protecting.
That’s because Tea Partiers aren’t violent sociopaths as the Left and liberal media would have you believe. They are ordinary, everyday Main Street Americans—49 percent Republican and 51 percent either independent or Democrat; 70 percent conservative, but 22 percent moderate; 55 percent male; and 45 percent with annual income below $50,000, 55 percent above $50,000. In age, education, employment status and race the Tea Party supporters break down statistically almost exactly like the general population, according to Gallup polls.
They’re people who would rather be at home or at work than having to stand outside their capitol building holding signs and demonstrating. They are people who, three or four years ago, would not have dreamed they would have to stand up to a government that is spending away the future of their children and grandchildren and making an unconstitutional power grab.
And make no mistake: That’s what the elected elitists are doing. That group of Ivy League educated lawyers and political scientists that walk the halls of Congress—and one who now resides in the White House and refuses to travel sans teleprompter—has been attempting to pull a bait and switch on the American people, telling them Obamacare had nothing to do with socialism or redistribution of wealth or power over the people but only in helping the less fortunate.
Some fell for it. But, despite Obama’s eloquent teleprompter and long windedness, most haven’t. Indeed, 52 percent still oppose Obamacare four weeks after its passage. But now that it has passed the elites are no longer hiding their true intent: socialist redistribution.
In their own words:
•“It’s a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a ‘redistribution of income’—well, so be it. I don’t call it that. I call it just being fair—giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.”—Vice President Joe Biden
•“(Health reform is) an income shift. It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower-income, middle-income Americans. … [T]he maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. (The new health care legislation) will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America.”—Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
•“I don’t worry about the Constitution on this. … What I care more about, I care more about the people dying every day that don’t have health care.”—Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.)
•“Let me remind you this (Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal healthcare) has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 (million) American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”—Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.)
To their credit, Republicans in Congress opposed Obamacare. It seems the GOP plans to run on a platform of “Repeal the Bill” as we head into the midterm elections this fall. However, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), in typical Republican style of surrendering before the battle has been enjoined, has already lost his backbone and is saying repeal is not going to happen. The surrender came three weeks after he said Republicans would and should run on a platform of repeal.
Senate candidate Mark Kirk of Illinois has also backed off his repeal the bill stance. Rep. Mike Castle, (R-Del.) is running for the state’s open Senate seat and he is also avoiding a pledge to repeal. Expect other Republicans to follow.
As I pointed out last week in Don’t Pin Your Hopes On The Party Of Lincoln, the GOP can’t be trusted to fight for smaller government. Big government is in their genes. Thankfully, Kirk and Castle have opposition.
Remember in 1994, after a bruising fight with President Bill Clinton over universal healthcare, Republicans ran on their Contract with America which would have, in their minds, streamlined government, required a balanced budget, created jobs, set term limits and produced other reforms. Some elements did not pass in Congress and others were vetoed by Clinton and the Republicans moved on to other things, like growing government under George W. Bush.
So if you want to take back your government—take back your country—from the Obama regime and his Marxists redistributionists, don’t think you’re going to do that by selecting just any Republican candidate. He or she may be a Bob Corker, Mike Castle or Mark Kirk—maybe a socialist, maybe a progressive or maybe just a spineless, deceitful politician—with no intention of shrinking government.
The Tea Parties will give you some idea of the worth of a candidate. But it’s up to each individual voter to check out a candidate’s record if he has one, or his words and deeds if he doesn’t, before the vote and to hold his feet to the fire after the election.
That’s the only way you’re going to be able to take your country back. The elitist redistributionists are feeling invincible, and their special interests promise generous campaign contributions when the campaign begins.
It’s your job as a voter—as a citizen—to show that your vote is more important than cash from corporatists, trial lawyers, unions and their other johns.
April 12, 2010 by Bob Livingston
Although President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and their elite socialistic foot soldiers cast it in pleasant, humanitarian terms as a means of providing healthcare to those who couldn’t otherwise afford it, the majority of Americans recognized Obamacare for what it was: a transfer of wealth to Big Pharma, trial lawyers, unions and other special interests and a power grab over society’s producers.
Hence, the growth of the Tea Party movement across the United States.
The Tea Party took root early in 2009 in response to the massive government spending policies and takeover of two-thirds of the American automobile industry and all of the financial industry by the redistributionists—carrying both the Democrat and Republican labels—seeking to turn America into Karl Marx’s dream state. The Tea Party grew stronger and louder as Obama—the Liar-in-Chief—denied his socialistic tendencies and looked down on them with an arrogant disdain and dismissiveness.
Tea Partiers found their voices as 2009 turned into 2010 and the power grab reached its zenith when Obama’s dream came true and the House and Senate overrode the will of the majority of Americans and passed into law Obamacare on March 21. They turned out by the thousands in Washington, D.C., that day and the day before—traveling there from all over the country on a couple of days notice—to protest, and those who couldn’t go flooded the Capitol switchboard with calls and the Capitol email servers with correspondence.
The arrogant elitists who occupy Washington, D.C., laughed in the faces of the Tea Partiers once the passage of Obamacare was assured. Pelosi grabbed her gavel and, along with a group of her lackeys, marched boldly through the crowd of Tea Party protesters on the day the voting began, hoping above hope to incite some incident that would allow them to paint the protesters as radicals and racists.
When no one took the bait the arrogant elitists made up an incident, with one congressman saying he was slurred by a racial epithet from Tea Partiers and another claiming he was spat upon. Despite those claims no arrests were made, no video or audio evidence of any slurs have turned up and the congressman who claims spittle flew his way was unable to make any kind of identification of a culprit. And Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 reward to the United Negro College Fund for evidence of a slur remains unclaimed.
Capitol police escorting the group of elected elitists through the crowd of Tea Party peasants saw no evidence of anything untoward and sensed no danger for those they were charged with protecting.
That’s because Tea Partiers aren’t violent sociopaths as the Left and liberal media would have you believe. They are ordinary, everyday Main Street Americans—49 percent Republican and 51 percent either independent or Democrat; 70 percent conservative, but 22 percent moderate; 55 percent male; and 45 percent with annual income below $50,000, 55 percent above $50,000. In age, education, employment status and race the Tea Party supporters break down statistically almost exactly like the general population, according to Gallup polls.
They’re people who would rather be at home or at work than having to stand outside their capitol building holding signs and demonstrating. They are people who, three or four years ago, would not have dreamed they would have to stand up to a government that is spending away the future of their children and grandchildren and making an unconstitutional power grab.
And make no mistake: That’s what the elected elitists are doing. That group of Ivy League educated lawyers and political scientists that walk the halls of Congress—and one who now resides in the White House and refuses to travel sans teleprompter—has been attempting to pull a bait and switch on the American people, telling them Obamacare had nothing to do with socialism or redistribution of wealth or power over the people but only in helping the less fortunate.
Some fell for it. But, despite Obama’s eloquent teleprompter and long windedness, most haven’t. Indeed, 52 percent still oppose Obamacare four weeks after its passage. But now that it has passed the elites are no longer hiding their true intent: socialist redistribution.
In their own words:
•“It’s a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a ‘redistribution of income’—well, so be it. I don’t call it that. I call it just being fair—giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.”—Vice President Joe Biden
•“(Health reform is) an income shift. It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower-income, middle-income Americans. … [T]he maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. (The new health care legislation) will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America.”—Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
•“I don’t worry about the Constitution on this. … What I care more about, I care more about the people dying every day that don’t have health care.”—Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.)
•“Let me remind you this (Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal healthcare) has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 (million) American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”—Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.)
To their credit, Republicans in Congress opposed Obamacare. It seems the GOP plans to run on a platform of “Repeal the Bill” as we head into the midterm elections this fall. However, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), in typical Republican style of surrendering before the battle has been enjoined, has already lost his backbone and is saying repeal is not going to happen. The surrender came three weeks after he said Republicans would and should run on a platform of repeal.
Senate candidate Mark Kirk of Illinois has also backed off his repeal the bill stance. Rep. Mike Castle, (R-Del.) is running for the state’s open Senate seat and he is also avoiding a pledge to repeal. Expect other Republicans to follow.
As I pointed out last week in Don’t Pin Your Hopes On The Party Of Lincoln, the GOP can’t be trusted to fight for smaller government. Big government is in their genes. Thankfully, Kirk and Castle have opposition.
Remember in 1994, after a bruising fight with President Bill Clinton over universal healthcare, Republicans ran on their Contract with America which would have, in their minds, streamlined government, required a balanced budget, created jobs, set term limits and produced other reforms. Some elements did not pass in Congress and others were vetoed by Clinton and the Republicans moved on to other things, like growing government under George W. Bush.
So if you want to take back your government—take back your country—from the Obama regime and his Marxists redistributionists, don’t think you’re going to do that by selecting just any Republican candidate. He or she may be a Bob Corker, Mike Castle or Mark Kirk—maybe a socialist, maybe a progressive or maybe just a spineless, deceitful politician—with no intention of shrinking government.
The Tea Parties will give you some idea of the worth of a candidate. But it’s up to each individual voter to check out a candidate’s record if he has one, or his words and deeds if he doesn’t, before the vote and to hold his feet to the fire after the election.
That’s the only way you’re going to be able to take your country back. The elitist redistributionists are feeling invincible, and their special interests promise generous campaign contributions when the campaign begins.
It’s your job as a voter—as a citizen—to show that your vote is more important than cash from corporatists, trial lawyers, unions and their other johns.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The End Game Is Near
AMERICAN SPECTATOR: The End Game Is Near, By Brandon Crocker
The American Left has long derided what it considers the romanticized myths regarding the virtue and wisdom of the group of dead, white males most responsible for the founding of the American Republic. It does not celebrate America as a land founded on the ideals (imperfectly as they may have often been realized) of individual liberty, equality under the law, and opportunity, but rather as a land founded on slavery, economic inequality, and exploitation. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the American Left also disdains the United States Constitution. The United States Constitution, even battered and weakened as it has been by precedents set by various liberal, activist Supreme Courts, still guards the liberty of Americans against the authoritarianism required to impose a fully socialist, or other collectivist, regime. It now appears we are headed towards the ultimate battle in the American Left's war on individual liberty.
The catalyst is the newly enacted "health care reform" law that was opposed by an outright majority of Americans (but endorsed by Fidel Castro who congratulated President Obama and the Democrats in Congress for finally imposing on Americans a system akin to what Cubans have had for decades). The focal point will be the "individual mandate" which requires all Americans to buy health insurance. The broader issue, however, is whether the Constitution in any way limits the power that the federal government can wield over individuals. The Left says "no."
According to the American Left (which now effectively controls the Democratic Party), the commerce clause in the Constitution, which allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, in reality allows the federal government to regulate in any way it sees fit any activity that remotely could affect economic activity -- in other words, just about anything, including, but not limited to, an individual's decision to buy, or not to buy, health insurance. I can think of a lot of activities that have more impact on the economy than does my decision on what kind of health insurance, if any, to purchase. For instance, how about my decision on whether or not to have children, and how many, or when I choose to retire? Are these decisions also subject to federal regulation under the commerce clause? One would think that if the authors of the Constitution really meant to say that the federal government has the power to regulate any activity (or even non-activity) it wants, they would have said so, instead of just saying that it has the right to regulate commerce across state lines. But left-wing law professors, journalists, and Democratic Party officials, assure us this is the case. And according to the national Democratic leadership, most everyone who thinks otherwise are ignorant, knuckle-dragging, racist, survivalist, whack-jobs.
Actually amending the Constitution takes significant national consensus. That's a problem when you want to leverage one election victory based on platitudes and "hope" into "bringing fundamental change to America" (to use President Obama's words). It is so much easier to try to get enough Supreme Court Justices appointed who share the view that the Constitution is more of a loose guideline than a legal document, and who are willing to gut the Constitution of all meaning in order to accommodate liberal policy objectives.
To the American Left, the idea that the Constitution exists to limit the power of the federal government is some moldy, if quaint, notion, with no place in the "modern" world. As E.J. Dionne recently wp-dyn/content/ article/2010/ 03/24/AR20100324 02429.html"> wrote in the Washington Post, court challenges to the individual mandate or federal meddling in matters reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment reveal "how far into the past" some people "want to push the nation." Indeed, he even claims "it would take a rashly activist court to find the individual mandate unconstitutional" because of "a more than seven-decade- long understanding of the Constitution' s interstate commerce clause that has allowed the federal government to regulate a modern, national economy." According to Mr. Dionne, the irrelevancy of the Constitution, at least in circumscribing the powers of the federal government to impose liberal social policies, is settled law.
Unfortunately, E.J. Dionne's view of this matter is not that of some fringe commentator, using Orwellian double-speak to label the potential faithful reading of the Constitution as the work of "a rashly activist court." This view currently holds sway in the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. It is undoubtedly held by at least three, probably four, and possibly five Supreme Court Justices.
Fortunately, the argument that seven decades of precedent have made it settled law that the federal government has near unlimited power allotted to it under the commerce clause is hogwash. Never before has the federal government claimed the right to force individuals to purchase a certain service or product due merely to the fact that they are alive. And other attempts to justify an expanded federal role in state and individual affairs with tortured interpretations of the commerce clause have, in fact, been shot down over the past couple of decades by the Supreme Court.
The justification most often cited by the Left for the need to uphold the individual mandate is not a legal one but a practical one. It is needed, supposedly, to solve the "free rider" problem. Since treatment is required by law, people can impose costs on the rest of us by not buying insurance and having us foot the bill when they need medical attention. Like much of the rhetoric coming from the current administration on health care, this argument is amazingly bold in its dishonestly. The people for whom it is true that taxpayers (or more often, hospitals) get stuck paying the bill are the indigent (paradoxically, the people that President Obama insists are dying because they don't have insurance and aren't getting treatment). For the rest of us, if we don't have insurance, or if our insurance does not cover some treatment, or if we carry high deductibles (another choice outlawed by the Democrats' new health care regime) we, as solvent individuals, pay the bill. We don't get a "free ride."
The case of the individual mandate potentially carries the legal precedent that the Left has long sought. If the Obama administration and its Leftist allies can win this case when it comes before the Supreme Court, which it ultimately will, they will have the legal ammunition to uphold any federal infringement on individual liberty in the name of regulating a "modern, national economy." The rights of the individual will no longer be protected by the Constitution, but merely allowed by the federal government, subject to revision by whatever faction holds a political majority over one or two elections.
This is not just the outcome that the American Left wants; it is the outcome the American Left needs if it is to "bring fundamental change to America." Most members of the current Democratic majority in both houses of Congress have already shown that they do not care about public opinion when it comes to redefining the relationship between citizens and the federal government. To preserve America as the land of the free, we need the Supreme Court to uphold its solemn duty.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/12/the-end-game-is-near
The American Left has long derided what it considers the romanticized myths regarding the virtue and wisdom of the group of dead, white males most responsible for the founding of the American Republic. It does not celebrate America as a land founded on the ideals (imperfectly as they may have often been realized) of individual liberty, equality under the law, and opportunity, but rather as a land founded on slavery, economic inequality, and exploitation. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the American Left also disdains the United States Constitution. The United States Constitution, even battered and weakened as it has been by precedents set by various liberal, activist Supreme Courts, still guards the liberty of Americans against the authoritarianism required to impose a fully socialist, or other collectivist, regime. It now appears we are headed towards the ultimate battle in the American Left's war on individual liberty.
The catalyst is the newly enacted "health care reform" law that was opposed by an outright majority of Americans (but endorsed by Fidel Castro who congratulated President Obama and the Democrats in Congress for finally imposing on Americans a system akin to what Cubans have had for decades). The focal point will be the "individual mandate" which requires all Americans to buy health insurance. The broader issue, however, is whether the Constitution in any way limits the power that the federal government can wield over individuals. The Left says "no."
According to the American Left (which now effectively controls the Democratic Party), the commerce clause in the Constitution, which allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, in reality allows the federal government to regulate in any way it sees fit any activity that remotely could affect economic activity -- in other words, just about anything, including, but not limited to, an individual's decision to buy, or not to buy, health insurance. I can think of a lot of activities that have more impact on the economy than does my decision on what kind of health insurance, if any, to purchase. For instance, how about my decision on whether or not to have children, and how many, or when I choose to retire? Are these decisions also subject to federal regulation under the commerce clause? One would think that if the authors of the Constitution really meant to say that the federal government has the power to regulate any activity (or even non-activity) it wants, they would have said so, instead of just saying that it has the right to regulate commerce across state lines. But left-wing law professors, journalists, and Democratic Party officials, assure us this is the case. And according to the national Democratic leadership, most everyone who thinks otherwise are ignorant, knuckle-dragging, racist, survivalist, whack-jobs.
Actually amending the Constitution takes significant national consensus. That's a problem when you want to leverage one election victory based on platitudes and "hope" into "bringing fundamental change to America" (to use President Obama's words). It is so much easier to try to get enough Supreme Court Justices appointed who share the view that the Constitution is more of a loose guideline than a legal document, and who are willing to gut the Constitution of all meaning in order to accommodate liberal policy objectives.
To the American Left, the idea that the Constitution exists to limit the power of the federal government is some moldy, if quaint, notion, with no place in the "modern" world. As E.J. Dionne recently wp-dyn/content/ article/2010/ 03/24/AR20100324 02429.html"> wrote in the Washington Post, court challenges to the individual mandate or federal meddling in matters reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment reveal "how far into the past" some people "want to push the nation." Indeed, he even claims "it would take a rashly activist court to find the individual mandate unconstitutional" because of "a more than seven-decade- long understanding of the Constitution' s interstate commerce clause that has allowed the federal government to regulate a modern, national economy." According to Mr. Dionne, the irrelevancy of the Constitution, at least in circumscribing the powers of the federal government to impose liberal social policies, is settled law.
Unfortunately, E.J. Dionne's view of this matter is not that of some fringe commentator, using Orwellian double-speak to label the potential faithful reading of the Constitution as the work of "a rashly activist court." This view currently holds sway in the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. It is undoubtedly held by at least three, probably four, and possibly five Supreme Court Justices.
Fortunately, the argument that seven decades of precedent have made it settled law that the federal government has near unlimited power allotted to it under the commerce clause is hogwash. Never before has the federal government claimed the right to force individuals to purchase a certain service or product due merely to the fact that they are alive. And other attempts to justify an expanded federal role in state and individual affairs with tortured interpretations of the commerce clause have, in fact, been shot down over the past couple of decades by the Supreme Court.
The justification most often cited by the Left for the need to uphold the individual mandate is not a legal one but a practical one. It is needed, supposedly, to solve the "free rider" problem. Since treatment is required by law, people can impose costs on the rest of us by not buying insurance and having us foot the bill when they need medical attention. Like much of the rhetoric coming from the current administration on health care, this argument is amazingly bold in its dishonestly. The people for whom it is true that taxpayers (or more often, hospitals) get stuck paying the bill are the indigent (paradoxically, the people that President Obama insists are dying because they don't have insurance and aren't getting treatment). For the rest of us, if we don't have insurance, or if our insurance does not cover some treatment, or if we carry high deductibles (another choice outlawed by the Democrats' new health care regime) we, as solvent individuals, pay the bill. We don't get a "free ride."
The case of the individual mandate potentially carries the legal precedent that the Left has long sought. If the Obama administration and its Leftist allies can win this case when it comes before the Supreme Court, which it ultimately will, they will have the legal ammunition to uphold any federal infringement on individual liberty in the name of regulating a "modern, national economy." The rights of the individual will no longer be protected by the Constitution, but merely allowed by the federal government, subject to revision by whatever faction holds a political majority over one or two elections.
This is not just the outcome that the American Left wants; it is the outcome the American Left needs if it is to "bring fundamental change to America." Most members of the current Democratic majority in both houses of Congress have already shown that they do not care about public opinion when it comes to redefining the relationship between citizens and the federal government. To preserve America as the land of the free, we need the Supreme Court to uphold its solemn duty.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/12/the-end-game-is-near
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