Obamacare in One Word [Archive] - Professional Soldiers ®

SF-TX

08-04-2009, 16:32

THE ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE OBAMACARE
Written by Dr. Dave Janda
Thursday, 23 July 2009

As a physician who has authored books on preventative health care, I was given the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at a Congressional Dinner at The Capitol Building in Washington last Friday (7/17).

The presentation was entitled Health Care Reform, The Power & Profit of Prevention, and I was gratified that it was well received.

In preparation for the presentation, I read the latest version of "reform" as authored by The Obama Administration and supported by Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid. Here is the link to the 1,018 page document:
http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Let me summarize just a few salient points of the above plan. First, however, it should be clear that the same warning notice must be placed on The ObamaCare Plan as on a pack of cigarettes: Consuming this product will be hazardous to your health.

The underlying method of cutting costs throughout the plan is based on rationing and denying care. There is no focus on preventing health care need whatever. The plan's method is the most inhumane and unethical approach to cutting costs I can imagine as a physician.

The rationing of care is implemented through The National Health Care Board, according to the plan. This illustrious Board "will approve or reject treatment for patients based on the cost per treatment divided by the number of years the patient will benefit from the treatment."

Translation.....if you are over 65 or have been recently diagnosed as having an advanced form of cardiac disease or aggressive cancer.....dream on if you think you will get treated.....pick out your coffin.

Oh, you say this could never happen? Sorry.... this is the same model they use in Britain.

The plan mandates that there will be little or no advanced treatments to be available in the future. It creates The Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research, the purpose of which is "to slow the development of new medications and technologies in order to reduce costs." Yes, this is to be the law.

The plan also outlines that doctors and hospitals will be overseen and reviewed by The National Coordinator For Health Information and Technology.

This " coordinator" will "monitor treatments being delivered to make sure doctors and hospitals are strictly following government guidelines that are deemed appropriate." It goes on to say....."Doctors and hospitals not adhering to guidelines will face penalties."

According to those in Congress, penalties could include large six figure financial fines and possible imprisonment.

So according to The ObamaCare Plan....if your doctor saves your life you might have to go to the prison to see your doctor for follow -up appointments. I believe this is the same model Stalin used in the former Soviet Union.

Section 102 has the Orwellian title, "Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage." What this section really mandates is that it is illegal to keep your private insurance if your status changes - e.g., if you lose or change your job, retire from your job and become a senior, graduate from college and get your first job. Yes, illegal.

When Mr. Obama hosted a conference call with bloggers urging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon as possible, a blogger from Maine referenced an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance.

He asked: "Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?" Mr. Obama replied: "You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about."

Then there is Section 1233 of The ObamaCare Plan, devoted to "Advanced Care Planning." After each American turns 65 years of age they have to go to a mandated counseling program that is designed to end life sooner.

This session is to occur every 5 years unless the person has developed a chronic illness then it must be done every year. The topics in this session will include, "how to decline hydration, nutrition and how to initiate hospice care." It is no wonder The Obama Administration does not like my emphasis on Prevention. For Mr. Obama, prevention is the "enemy" as people would live longer.

I rest my case. The ObamaCare Plan is hazardous to the health of every American.

After I finished my Capitol Hill presentation, I was asked by a Congressman in the question-answer session: "I'll be doing a number of network interviews on the Obama Health Care Plan. If I am asked what is the one word to describe the plan what should I answer."

The answer is simple, honest, direct, analytical, sad but truthful. I told him that one word is FASCIST.

Then I added, "I hope you'll have the courage to use that word, Congressman. No other word is more appropriate."

Dr. Dave Janda, MD, is an orthopedic surgeon, and a world-recognized expert on the prevention of sports injuries, particularly in children. His website is noinjury.com.

http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3714/87/

nmap

08-04-2009, 17:45

Thank you - this is an interesting analysis.

GratefulCitizen

08-04-2009, 22:52

Maybe this his how they plan to fix social security.

Call it "Carrousel".

MiTTMedic

08-05-2009, 11:12

Reminds me of the movie "Soylent Green"

armymom1228

08-05-2009, 12:40

I cannot wait for The One to turn 65.

He realy would not want to talk to my 90 yr old mom.. who is in GREAT health.
She has all her own marbles and a few of the neighbors as well.
She says there are two groups Congress should not mess with, the gun owners and the retirees..

She has developed a "'tude about the dood" as she said to me this morning. I got my ear bent over what SHE thinks about Obamacare. Thank god she has Tricare Prime and does not rely on Medicare much.

This whole thing is too scary beyond words.

Razor

08-05-2009, 17:23

Thank god she has Tricare Prime and does not rely on Medicare much.

At over 65, wouldn't she be on Tricare For Life?

armymom1228

08-05-2009, 17:48

At over 65, wouldn't she be on Tricare For Life?

You are correct, MY bad.. its all that sniffing PB Blaster today and having a brain aflutter because HE is flying home from over there tomorrow. That made me have that nasty brainvacumn.. yeah Tricare for Life, I should know I do her paperwork for her.. anyong got any active brain cells for rent? I need them for few days.. just until I ...............

Dad

08-08-2009, 17:27

interesting article. Look out for another sellout like the drug for seniors bill passed a few years ago
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32340524/ns/politics

Paslode

08-08-2009, 20:51

My Dad had(6) 6" Thick binders full of VA claim applications, all the associated paper work and over a decade to get it through the chain.....for one knee injured jumping off a Half Track during a mortar attack in Korea.

That is my expectation of Obama Care.

ACE844

08-08-2009, 21:05

I suspect the next great innovation of Obama care will be to 'stimulate jobs' by initiating the multiple queue system the Eastern European countries have used for decades.

Don't worry you just have to wait in line at this window to get your form stamped for the next line and the second window, then you go to the third window to pay to get om the list for the fourth window who may or may not get back to you or help you with your space in line to see an actual doctor. :rolleyes:

Pocket NCO

08-09-2009, 16:13

Team Sergeant

08-09-2009, 16:28

Paslode

08-09-2009, 18:00

The Reaper

08-09-2009, 18:59

NiteTrain

08-09-2009, 20:11

They lure you in with a small claim and a big promise, and it gets worse from there. They are experts at boiling the frog just slowly enough to keep him from jumping out of the pot before he is cooked.

TR

And if this plan is implemented....*DING* Frog legs anyone..Buen Provicho

HowardCohodas

08-09-2009, 20:56

"High-risk, low-reward" people are going to be encouraged to forego expensive measures in the last few months of their lives.

TR

This goes on today, within families, just not government directed. "Government directed" makes all the difference in the world.

Richard

08-10-2009, 04:25

Some points to think about from the editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

SHOUTING AND STOMPING WON'T OBSCURE THE NEED FOR REFORM
Cynthia Tucker, AJC, 8 Aug 2009

Why are the so-called tea-baggers so angry and frightened by the prospect of health care reform? Why would any ordinary citizen be upset by proposals to modernize and rationalize what we generously call a "health care system"? For most health care consumers, little is more frightening than the "health care system" that currently exists.

Let's leave aside, for a moment, the estimated 47 million or so Americans who have no health insurance. It's easy to understand their predicament. A young, healthy construction worker falls off a ladder and ends up with hundreds of thousands in bills he cannot pay. Or a middle-aged diabetic is laid off and finds herself skimping on doctor's visits because she can no longer afford to go. We hear stories like that often enough to enable us to empathize with the plight of the uninsured.

Yet, it shouldn't take much of an imagination (or much of a memory) to understand the dilemmas faced by many consumers who do have a health insurance policy. While opponents of reform have frightened consumers with warnings of "rationing" if President Obama's proposals are enacted, anyone with health insurance knows that medical care is rationed right now. You only get as much as you -- or your insurance company -- will pay for.

It doesn't matter what you may need. If your insurer won't cover it and you can't afford to pay out of pocket, you don't get the medical care. (The exception, of course, is emergency room treatment, which hospitals are obligated to provide.)

The for-profit health insurance industry is in the business of maximizing profits for their shareholders, and the only way they can do that is to hold down the payments they make for medical care. That means they spend a lot of their time (and a lot of their money) figuring out ways to deny claims.

That's why so many patients find their claims denied after they have spent years paying premiums. You may have faced this yourself: You're at home recovering from an illness, only to start receiving bills for expenses the insurance company has refused to pay. Sometimes, the reasons for denying coverage are in the very fine print that came with your policy. Sometimes, the insurer is just behaving unfairly, hoping you are too sick to fight back.

At recent townhall-style forums held by members of Congress or administration officials, some belligerent tea-baggers have held up signs saying, "What's wrong with profit?" The answer is this: It has no place in the health insurance industry. It distorts and disrupts the provisions of health care, adding costs without adding quality of care.

The health care market doesn't function like the market for automobiles or artichokes or flat-screen TVs. If you don't like the price, you just don't buy. But you walk away from expensive health insurance at your own risk.

There is no real competition among insurance companies, as recent research has shown. In 94 percent of metropolitan areas across the country, the market is dominated by no more than two insurance companies, according to the American Medical Association. Republicans claim that the answer is to provide more competition, but they had years to accomplish that, and they didn't. The GOP knows perfectly well that health insurers fight real competition tooth and nail -- as they are fighting the proposal for a public insurance option.

Some of the tea-baggers may have little recent experience with private health insurance because, from the looks of them, many are covered by Medicare. Why would they object to allowing government to get more involved in health insurance for the rest of us, since they already enjoy the largess of a government program? (Oddly, after decades of conservative government-bashing, many people simply don't understand that Medicare is a government-run, taxpayer-supported program. Or "socialism," as some would have it.)

The tea-baggers aside, most health care consumers know perfectly well that the system isn't working and needs to be fixed. Bring on reform.

Dad

08-10-2009, 05:05

Much has been said about the current plan bankrupting small businesses. There is another side to the story. What about those who already provide insurance for their employees, or just themselves? Being small, they don't have the advantages of larger companies. Their fees increase 10-15% each year (the "death spiral). To save they are forced to look for new insurance every 2-3 years, knowing in time the new policy will leapfrog the old in cost. But they put themselves in very real risk when they do this due to the "prior condition" clause. The insurance company decides what is prior condition. I personally know of a small business, a construction contractor, who switched his insurance 10 months ago so he could continue to afford insurance for his 10-12 full time employees. Two weeks ago he discovered his son needs surgery. Not covered, says his insurance company, a prior condition. the small businessman is now out $20,000 out of his pocket. This at a time when business isn't exactly booming. A lot of small business owners would not have the $20,000 so he is fortunate.

Pete

08-10-2009, 06:00

..... What about those who already provide insurance for their employees, or just themselves? ........

If I am not mistaken if you are self employed your medical insurance is not tax deductable while a company's is. Why is that? Because Congress set it up that way to punish the self employed.

With this coming bill is there a provision to punish companies that don't provide health insurance?

I think there is. What is the punishment fee? Let's just say $1,500 per employer. What is the company's own costs? Let's just say $4,500.

By dropping it's own coverage and paying the fine a company, in that case could "save" $3,000 per employee and the Government will "get" $1,500.

While everybody's books look better, more money coming in, the problem is less money going into the health care system.

That "less" will be made up somewhere. Sure would be nice to know how that is all going to work before we jump off the cliff wrapped in the "change" flag.

Pete

08-10-2009, 06:26

And if you do have a good plan the critters want to tax it.

"Tax on High-End Health Plans Threatens Wider Group"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124986075893618039.html

"......"It's startling to see how rapidly that number would go up," said Michael Langan, a principal at Towers Perrin.

The proposed tax would apply to the amount of a health plan that exceeds a certain threshold, which would increase over time based on a cost index or other formula. If the threshold is set at $25,000, for example, and the annual premium of a family plan costs $26,000, $1,000 would be taxed. Though lawmakers haven't released any draft legislation, a tax rate in the range of 20% to 35% is being considered.

Self-insured employers would be taxed directly and would likely reduce their employees' benefits or curb wage increases to absorb the levy, policy experts say..............."

The problem with all this is - Once the government is allowed to "set the bar" it can move the "bar" any place it wants at any time it wants.

Dad

08-10-2009, 07:39

Pete
I am in no way supporting the plan currently in the house. Supposedly the one in the senate is better so far. When I started a businees a few years ago, I had to buy my own insurance for my family. When I left the company I worked for I was able to buy insurance through their plan for 6 months (COBRA). It cost me $470 per month. At the end of 6 months I had to find health insurance on the open market. It cost $700 per month. In 18 months it rose to $1100 per month. We had no claims in that period. My auto rates are regulated by the state. My homeowners insurance rates are regulated by the state. Health insurers can do pretty much what they want. I am back working for a company which provides health coverage. We have been through a series of lay offs. I am safe unless we go out of business. My youngest son has since been diagnosed with a disease which will eventually lead to a transplant so he will be uninsurable if I lose my current insurance.His disease is not his fault. He can go in the pool but there is a waiting period and it is expensive. I don't want welfare to take care of my son--I just want a system which allows me, through my own hard work, to provide for my families welfare. I am not asking for a f#$%#g handout from anybody. I just want an efficient, fair system which spreads the risk so health insurance is available to any one willing to work.I can't imagine I am the only person in this position. I know there are small business owners in this group. what are your experiences?

HowardCohodas

08-10-2009, 08:02

Many, if not most, of the problems with the currents health care system are a consequence of government rules and/or government intervention. Yet it seem that the cure for the current problems is not removing the offending rules and regulations, but to add more. As if the technocrats will be more effective and less harmful this time. Not in any reality I can foresee.

Pocket NCO

08-10-2009, 08:55

Gentlemen,

I agree with all of the counterpoints to my post, especially those from Team Sergeant and The Reaper. This bill is a money sink that threatens any decent attempt at providing quality health care to those who need it. My intent was to argue that creative interpretations of what is actually written doesn't provide the type of information needed IOT intelligently attack this piece of Charmin ;)

Pete

08-10-2009, 09:23

... I just want an efficient, fair system which spreads the risk so health insurance is available to any one willing to work......?

And that is the rub.

What is "fair"?

And "available to any one willing to work" begs the question what is work?

Life for those who work for what they get is a trade off in what they have and buy. What is $1,100? Around here you can get a pretty good house for $1,100 a month, or two new loaded SUVs or maybe a pretty good family health care plan.

But that gets right back to the basic question. Why is health insurance not like car insurance? Why can't the average family sit down and shop for health insurance like they can for car insurance. Pick a plan that covers what you and your family needs.

Most group plans include you with everybody else in the group. Why would a 50 year old male be needing breast implants or pregnacy coverage?

The answer is government has driven health care in this direction.

When something becomes "Free" those not paying will abuse it and those paying will pay more.

Life sucks - nobody said it was fair.

Pete

08-10-2009, 10:10

Maybe we should become like the French

Oh, wait, what's this?

"France Fights Universal Care's High Cost"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124958049241511735.html

"...........French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie, proportionally to their income, and patients get treatment even if they can't pay for it. France spends 11% of national output on health services, compared with 17% in the U.S., and routinely outranks the U.S. in infant mortality and some other health measures.

The problem is that Assurance Maladie has been in the red since 1989. This year the annual shortfall is expected to reach €9.4 billion ($13.5 billion), and €15 billion in 2010, or roughly 10% of its budget.........."

Team Sergeant

08-10-2009, 10:12

And that is the rub.

What is "fair"?

And "available to any one willing to work" begs the question what is work?

Life for those who work for what they get is a trade off in what they have and buy. What is $1,100? Around here you can get a pretty good house for $1,100 a month, or two new loaded SUVs or maybe a pretty good family health care plan.

But that gets right back to the basic question. Why is health insurance not like car insurance? Why can't the average family sit down and shop for health insurance like they can for car insurance. Pick a plan that covers what you and your family needs.

Most group plans include you with everybody else in the group. Why would a 50 year old male be needing breast implants or pregnacy coverage?

The answer is government has driven health care in this direction.

When something becomes "Free" those not paying will abuse it and those paying will pay more.

Life sucks - nobody said it was fair.

Government health care; ensure all 20-30 million non-tax paying illegal aliens currently residing in this country receive free health care, free food, & a free education.

As Pete said, there's not a goddamn thing fair about it. You will pay more and the illegals will pay nothing. Sure is working for Califorina, a state that is about to go bankrupt.

That's what's about to happen to the entire country.

These arrogant & incompetent morons, feinstein, pelosi, boxer; the "LEADERS" of Califorina, a state that boasted the 7th largest economy in the entire world is going bankrupt.

Those same idiots are now asking the United States of America to follow in their foot steps.

This train wreck has not even started, but it's coming.

TS

echoes

08-10-2009, 10:50

Government health care; ensure all 20-30 million non-tax paying illegal aliens currently residing in this country receive free health care, free food, & a free education.

As Pete said, there's not a goddamn thing fair about it. You will pay more and the illegals will pay nothing. Sure is working for Califorina, a state that is about to go bankrupt.

That's what's about to happen to the entire country.

These arrogant & incompetent morons, feinstein, pelosi, boxer; the "LEADERS" of Califorina, a state that boasted the 7th largest economy in the entire world is going bankrupt.

Those same idiots are now asking the United States of America to follow in their foot steps.

This train wreck has not even started, but it's coming.

TS

Very well said Sir! A person would have to have their head in the sand not to notice the illegals are clammoring, hiding, and waiting for this shit to pass as law.:mad:

A very sad state of affairs indeed. What I love to see on the TV now though, is Fox news coverage of the "Town-Hall" meetings! The anger, contempt, and malice with which the protestors show their indignation is inspiring!

Holly:munchin

greenberetTFS

08-10-2009, 10:52

Lenin in Russia introduced Cradle to the grave health care and after only one year they where bankrupt.............:rolleyes: So much for Universal health care.....:mad:

Big Teddy :munchin

Pete

08-10-2009, 15:27

Team Sergeant

08-10-2009, 17:36

Owww, Canada

ACROSS THE BORDER, COST-SPIRALING SYSTEM IS ABOUT TO CHANGE —AND MUST

http://www.buffalonews.com/367/story/758795.html?imw=Y

"......A very recent trawl of the government Web site revealed the often-substantial geographic differences in wait times. At St. Joseph’s Health Center in Toronto, the wait time for breast cancer surgery was listed as 48 days, while approximately 85 miles away at Peterborough Regional Health Center, the wait time was only 18 days.

St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto listed a wait time of 113 days for its general surgery, while some 58 miles away at Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay, one need wait only 46 days.

At Kingston General Hospital, a wait time of 73 days existed for bypass surgery, but 160 miles away, at the University Health Network in Toronto, there was only a 35-day wait........"

18 Days?

46 Days?

35 Days?

Their "good" places sound a little slow to me. But then again if you don't have a job there's nothing hard about just sitting around waiting for your surgery appointment to come up - after all, it's "free".

One thing that "our" current government is not taking into account, when you decide to "socialize" medical care you might as well cut the medical doctors that will "see" patients in half. You're going to get quite a few that are going to "jump" ship and go into research, or become lawyers instead.

I had a thought, can you still "sue" the doctors working in the "socialized" medical system?

I can tell you now that the "standard of care" currently practiced in 99.9% of the hospitals will go "out the window" with "socialized" medicine.

And people thought that the hospital wait is bad now......... just wait until obamacare begins........:D

Great job America.

Don't call me, I'll be fishing.

TS

Gypsy

08-10-2009, 17:52

estimated 47 million or so Americans who have no health insurance

The above quote is from the article, not figures posted personally by Richard. This is an inflated figure when you take into consideration about 10-12 million illegal aliens who don't deserve insurance...you know, since they don't belong here, folks who choose NOT to take insurance etc etc.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/medicarehealthinsurance/a/insurancestats.htm

The Citizenship Factor
According to Census Bureau data, of the estimated 46 million "Americans" without health insurance, more than 10 million are non-U.S. citizens.

Some Just Don't Want Insurance
Many young workers, whose employers do offer it, simply do not consider health insurance. According to the Census Bureau, 18.3 million of the uninsured are under age 34.

Under the Affordable Health Care Choices Act, health insurance will be mandatory. Individuals who fail to carry adequate coverage will face a tax penalty of 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income, capped at the national average premium for individual basic coverage.

The Affordability Factor
In 2007 the Census Bureau reported that more than 14 million people without health insurance earned annual incomes of at least $50,000, with 7.2 million of them making over $75,000.

Gypsy

08-10-2009, 17:56

But that gets right back to the basic question. Why is health insurance not like car insurance? Why can't the average family sit down and shop for health insurance like they can for car insurance. Pick a plan that covers what you and your family needs.

Your entire post was excellent. This right here makes the most sense, and is how it should be.

But alas, common sense and politics don't seem to mix so well...kind of like oil and vinegar.

echoes

08-11-2009, 11:34

The ONE is speaking right now, at the just started "Town Hall..."

First question, "Should we not just leave the republicans behind, since they are not on board with the idea to help all of the uninsured?" (paraphrase)

My body feels like it wants to head straight to the bathroom, and get sick!:mad:

On a good note, watching Alen Spector get his ass chewed on Fox this morning at his "Town Hall" was awesome!

Holly:munchin

Team Sergeant

08-11-2009, 15:38

The Citizenship Factor
According to Census Bureau data, of the estimated 46 million "Americans" without health insurance, more than 10 million are non-U.S. citizens.

Funny that that quote says more than 10 million, it could say more than 5 million, or 7 million, but it says 10 million. Doesn't say more than 10 but less than 35 million.

I've read enough to believe the U.S. illegals number in the 10's of millions..... I've read credible articles that place the illegal numbers at "more" than 20 million......

So stating that "more than 10 million" don't have health insurance is not a lie, but I'd bet the farm it's far from the real truth.......

I wonder what the car insurance companies put the numbers of uninsured motorists at, you know the ones that everyone that carries insurance tries to insure against....... again, I'd be will to bet it's in the tens of millions........

Team Sergeant

Bordercop

08-12-2009, 06:39

Here's the link:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTAzM2FlN2JkZjA4MWNmM2UxNmRiOTljN2Q2ZWEzMmU=&w=MA==

The Public Option
In rushing health-care reform, Obama has pushed democracy to the side.

By Ivan Kenneally

In the last few weeks, the debate over health care has taken an angry and contentious turn by any standard. Town-hall meetings and public rallies, not known for their docile tenor under normal circumstances, have been punctuated by unusually spirited opposition to Democrat proposals for sweeping reform. What began as a few isolated outbursts of spontaneous frustration has become commonplace at public gatherings, prompting many Democrats to cancel appearances and limit their communications to press releases. While Obama’s administration continues to claim broad and deep public support for its legislative efforts, poll after poll indicates growing suspicion that Democrat-authored proposals are fiscally reckless and, despite repeated protests to the contrary, designed to nationalize the health-care industry as a whole.

In response to the unwelcome rumblings of dissent, leading Democrats have attempted to squash public debate under the sheer weight of rhetorical condescension. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has mocked town-hall attendees’ “manufactured anger” and has called them the “Brooks Brothers Brigade,” following California senator Barbara Boxer’s claim that they are too “well-dressed” to be true grassroots activists. The Democrat National Committee has referred to these outspoken critics of Obamacare as “mobs.” Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, speaker of the House and House majority leader respectively, co-authored an op-ed in USA Today referring to such clamorous objection as “un-American.” The White House has established a “Reality Check” website that supposedly debunks any and all challenges to their policy positions, suggesting that dissent is the product of either dishonesty or delusion — no intelligent or sincere American could possibly take issue with the only rational avenue available for serious reform.

However uncivil some of the town-hall interruptions have been, the palpable irritation on the part of so many disgruntled citizens is not only an expression of political opposition to a particular policy but a bubbling over of resentment at the feeling of general powerlessness. At every turn, the Obama administration has attempted to fast-track an immensely complex piece of legislation, ensuring that a transparent national debate is impossible and that even our legislators remain ignorant of the details of any proposal. The real question here is not whether these protests are “organized” or even disruptive — the Democrats used union-funded political organizations in 2005 to stage public protests, orchestrate “grassroots” political advocacy, and televise professionally produced advertisements to undermine President Bush’s platform for Social Security reform. Rather, the point is the audacity of disagreement. Obama has tried to create the illusion that debate is dangerous, given the exigency of the current crisis, and unnecessary, given the solid public consensus.

Unfortunately, the contempt for public debate is one of the hallmarks of Obama’s technocratic approach to politics — in place of a healthy and democratic deference to public opinion, we get the assurance of expertise that comes with a bevy of special-issue czars. The key ingredients of President Obama’s election victory were technocratic competence and a therapeutic populism — his Ivy League intellect would be the key to solving our average-Joe problems. Nevertheless, it’s not at all clear that the technocratic conception of politics is compatible with a robust deliberative democracy. And Obama’s technocratic side is winning out.

Obama’s populism is based on the satisfaction of the will of the people — he decries, however insincerely or inconsistently, the undermining of general consent by the overrepresentation of special interests or of the wealthy. However, Obama’s conception of techno-politics is based on the embrace of a kind of techno-aristocracy — hyper-educated elites with specialized political or scientific expertise are singled out to manage the benighted rest of us. The conspicuous contradiction embedded within Obama’s political program is between his populist embrace of consent and his technocratic dismissal of it: The former presumes the prudence of common sense; the latter rejects it as radically untutored.

Examples of this tension are numerous. In his March 9, 2009 “Executive Order Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells,” President Obama equated President Bush’s restrictions on federal funding for stem-cell experimentation to “limitations on scientific inquiry itself.” Similarly, in the remarks Obama delivered to the press announcing the executive order, he described his revision of his predecessor’s position as a means for “protecting free and open inquiry,” implying that the moral objections shared by so many Americans were not only the product of irrational superstition but tantamount to a wholesale rejection of the quest for truth.

It has also become impossible to deny that Democrats deliberately concealed the jurisprudential philosophy that clearly guided Sonia Sotomayor’s 18 years on the bench. While this made political sense, given that a considerable portion of the public would probably find her rejection of judicial objectivity unpalatable, it was democratically dubious. As was the goal underlying Sotomayor’s nomination in the first place: To increase the role of the judiciary in making policy while decreasing that of the people’s elected representatives — an updated paternalism that seeks to protect the people from themselves.

Finally, despite a burgeoning distrust of both the economic and environmental defensibility of the cap-and-trade bill, Obama has proceeded swiftly, pointing to non-existent mandates from the scientific community and the public at large. Again, it would be edifying to the American public if their representatives in the House slowed the frenetic pace of this legislation and drew attention to the disputes over the bill and the science behind it. However, the tripartite formula for technocratic politics — the illusion of immanent crisis, the pretense of public consensus, and the suppression of open debate — has prevented a serious and non-ideological dialogue from emerging.

The real danger of Obama’s technocratic administration lies in its habit of tendentiously recasting serious moral and political debates as misguided arguments about plainly observable empirical facts. Such intellectual self-indulgence preemptively labels all disagreement as uninformed or nefarious and renders democratic process — and all those that demand it — tiresome and frustrating. This transforms every nuanced policy debate into a choice between the light of reason and the darkness of ignorance; this heavy-handed dogmatism inevitably creates a cultural cleavage between the chosen bearers of truth and those who stupidly refuse the gifts bestowed by progress. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus recently remarked that Democratic health-care reform was stamped with a “sense of inevitability,” but there are still plenty of Americans with real anger about their “manufactured” consent — for these citizens, the conclusion of this political trial is not yet foregone. Whether or not Republicans can defeat Obama’s health-care reforms, they owe their constituents a genuine national debate that does justice to the public option that matters most — the one for democracy.

HowardCohodas

08-12-2009, 08:25

The Citizenship Factor
According to Census Bureau data, of the estimated 46 million "Americans" without health insurance, more than 10 million are non-U.S. citizens.

And now with the census being managed from the White House and with the instructions to count illegals in the census, states with lots of illegals will get additional representatives. I heard an estimate that with this method, California will get 6-7 additional representatives.

Team Sergeant

08-12-2009, 09:05

And now with the census being managed from the White House and with the instructions to count illegals in the census, states with lots of illegals will get additional representatives. I heard an estimate that with this method, California will get 6-7 additional representatives.

In that case Arizona should get a few dozen new reps.....

It's time we place a bounty on them and send them all home and save another trillion dollars. Yeah, it would work, at $100 a head I'd be a multi-millionaire in less than a year.

I for one do not want to pay for their health care, education, food, car insurance, housing, etc etc etc

Team Sergeant

Bordercop

08-12-2009, 09:34

You start on the U.S./Canadian border and drive 'em south across the border and back home! :D

http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/20.html

Perge Sed Caute

Gypsy

08-12-2009, 17:25

FCWood

08-12-2009, 19:53

And now with the census being managed from the White House and with the instructions to count illegals in the census, states with lots of illegals will get additional representatives. I heard an estimate that with this method, California will get 6-7 additional representatives.

Oh really? I thought the census people were already instructed to count every single person legal or not, but only those who said they were legal counted for the electoral college. I may have been wrong.

Richard

08-12-2009, 20:28

armymom1228

08-12-2009, 21:15

If you actually read the bill, the "kill the old people" clause (sec. 1233) is actually just counseling on the creation of a DNR (do not resuscitate) order. Do I think this bill is garbage? Yes, yes I do. However, people spouting off at the mouth about the bill euthanizing your grandma doesn't provide anyone with intelligent ammunition to fight it with.

This part of the bill has NO business even being there. It goes to show just how ignorant Zero and his minions are.

Anytime anyone goes into a hospital or nursing home for whatever reason. Someone is charged with suggesting a living will or possible DNR papers.
Its sop in the healthcare industry. I have heard, time and again, the Terry Schiavo scenario used as a bludgeon, esp with the elderly, to get them to sign a living will and appoint a healthcare surrogate.

As for DNR counseling, what a load of it.. that is the polite way of telling our elderly that they might as well shoot themselves and get it over with.
If I Had a dime for every person I Have seen come back from the 'dead' that I could have sworn would spend the rest of thier existance as a veg.. I could have bought a new S class Benz instead of that Mercury Milan I got last June.

If I were either elderly with medical conditions that simply were going to be terminal in the long run.. or my medical condition was such that I was diagnosed with a terminal illness,then Yes, a DNR would be appropriate. Otherwise.. NO... in no uncertian terms. My kids know my wishes and they are to let me go if I have another heart attack and they cannot bring me back..
NO tube feeding or life support... but otherwise go for it..

But to have some sort of law that required me to have 'DNR counseling'I don't thnk so..

the Obamanator is a loon in my book.. and gets more and more loony as time goes on. :(

armymom1228

08-12-2009, 21:24

My brother-in-law is a nationally regarded colon-rectal surgeon - he's absolutely OCD in his practice and has never been a party in a lawsuit - his malpractice premiums are horrendous. :(

Hell - the malpractice threat for OB-GYNs is so bad they've begun running for Congress!* :p

Richard's $.02 :munchin

* Ron Paul

Obama is correct in one sense..the Insurance industry, ALL of it needs to be overhauled.. :Physicians need to start policing themselves. Incompetent docs need to be tossed out the door instead of being covered up and huge settlements paid for the wrong foot being cut off or being too stupid to diagnose correctly and so on..

Car Insurance premiums based on one's credit rating .. puhleeze.. a good doc penalized with huge premiums simply because some fellow sleezeball incompetent had to pay off for his incompetence.. Premiums should be based on more than of the models that the insurance companies use now..

If physicians were required to put up a cash bond for thier potential incompetence, and have it in a interest bearing escrow account. It might make the less competent onces think twice,when they pay that out, until they can put up the bond again..they don't work. I dunno its just an idea..

Insurance itself is the problem.. IF I as a private pay person, go to the hospital I pay 100% of the cost of care.. but the insured individual's insurance company only pays 50% of what I pay. There is something messed up about that..

I don't think this bill will pass and IF it does, the faces we currently see IN Congress will dramatically change. I hope our national level legislators have some modicum of sense left.

Please to note; our President did not go to Fla to make pleas for his precious health care 'reform' bill... no he went to a notoriously liberal state, New Hampshire. I dare him to face Florida voters. I doubt he will get the loving reception he got in NH.
AM

GratefulCitizen

08-12-2009, 23:00

Please to note; our President did not go to Fla to make pleas for his precious health care 'reform' bill... no he went to a notoriously liberal state, New Hampshire. I dare him to face Florida voters. I doubt he will get the loving reception he got in NH.
AM

Here's a little love ;) :
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/11/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5235445.shtml

Razor

08-13-2009, 07:39

My brother-in-law is a nationally regarded colon-rectal surgeon - he's absolutely OCD in his practice...

<groan> ;)

Defender968

08-13-2009, 07:40

Obama is correct in one sense..the Insurance industry, ALL of it needs to be overhauled.. :Physicians need to start policing themselves. Incompetent docs need to be tossed out the door instead of being covered up and huge settlements paid for the wrong foot being cut off or being too stupid to diagnose correctly and so on..

Car Insurance premiums based on one's credit rating .. puhleeze.. a good doc penalized with huge premiums simply because some fellow sleezeball incompetent had to pay off for his incompetence.. Premiums should be based on more than of the models that the insurance companies use now..

If physicians were required to put up a cash bond for thier potential incompetence, and have it in a interest bearing escrow account. It might make the less competent onces think twice,when they pay that out, until they can put up the bond again..they don't work. I dunno its just an idea..

Insurance itself is the problem.. IF I as a private pay person, go to the hospital I pay 100% of the cost of care.. but the insured individual's insurance company only pays 50% of what I pay. There is something messed up about that..

I don't think this bill will pass and IF it does, the faces we currently see IN Congress will dramatically change. I hope our national level legislators have some modicum of sense left.

Please to note; our President did not go to Fla to make pleas for his precious health care 'reform' bill... no he went to a notoriously liberal state, New Hampshire. I dare him to face Florida voters. I doubt he will get the loving reception he got in NH.
AM

The funny thing is everyone I talk to thinks that something needs to be done about healthcare, some of the reasons why you address above, yet every one of them realizes that the bills being considered do not and will not address the actual problems. I have great healthcare coverage and I still believe that we need reform in the system, but universal healthcare is not the option. One of the issues is tort reform IMHO and no one is even talking about it. The general populace I interact with both family, friends, as well as acquaintances believe congresses healthcare "reform" plans are going to degrade the healthcare we already have without bringing any positives while piling on the debt. It's very refreshing to see actual common sense at work by the general public after the last election :)

FCWood

08-13-2009, 18:05

My brother-in-law is a nationally regarded colon-rectal surgeon - he's absolutely OCD in his practice and has never been a party in a lawsuit - his malpractice premiums are horrendous. :(

Hell - the malpractice threat for OB-GYNs is so bad they've begun running for Congress!* :p

Richard's $.02 :munchin

* Ron Paul

That's one big part of the problem...insurance agencies charging so much to doctors. Who do you think really pays those horrendous premiums in the end. The doctors patients do or their insurance. And we wonder why going to the doctor costs so much...

The thing about most health insurance is that it wasn't designed as a "pay for everything" plan. It's designed so that we pick up the tab to a limit. The insurance is in case of emergency. Say you have cancer, etc. We are going to have to remember that we are still responsible for part of our bills. Too many are wanting to government to pick up the tab and they will want Uncle Sam to pick up the whole tab.

The other alternative is those doctors that don't actually mess up, but have frivolous lawsuits filed against them due to scumbags trying to make false claims to get rich quick. The doctor looks bad when trying to get a new job at a new hospital even though he won every case.

As for the DNR counseling...I understand it to not be mandatory counseling. Currently Medicare does not reimburse doctors for counseling patients on DNRs. Therefore, some offer this service for free, some charge only for an office visit directly to the elderly person, and some refuse to provide the service at all since they won't get paid.

Therefore, the bill is making the patient requested DNR consultation reimbursable. This way the lower classes can have access to same consultation privileges of more well-off patients. That is all. It will not be forced on anyone. I don't want the government telling me I have to do it either, but I would like the ability for those who already depend solely on Medicare to have the opportunity to plan appropriately.

I have been through the whole, "we can't find the DNR so it's your sole call to pull the plug," thing with my dad. It's not a fun experience. While you still have to give the ok, it's much easier when you (and the rest of the family) know EXACTLY what your loved one wanted.

That is why the American Medical Association (AMA), AARP, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and the Consumers Union support this provision.

Further, more detailed information can be read on: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111754971

FCW

armymom1228

08-13-2009, 19:15

As for the DNR counseling...I understand it to not be mandatory counseling. Currently Medicare does not reimburse doctors for counseling patients on DNRs. Therefore, some offer this service for free, some charge only for an office visit directly to the elderly person, and some refuse to provide the service at all since they won't get paid.

It has been my experience, in a 30 yr nursing career, that MD's rarely even bring up the subject. It is done by the patient, and then usualy to get the MD to sign the order. If an MD would refuse to talk to my mom about a DNR because her Tricare for Life/Medicare/State of Fla employee insurance won't pay.. he would never see her or me again.. any MD that did that is acting unethically.

Therefore, the bill is making the patient requested DNR consultation reimbursable. This way the lower classes can have access to same consultation privileges of more well-off patients.

I am speechless... words fail me... ...:mad: what an elitist comment.. good lord..

That is all. It will not be forced on anyone. I don't want the government telling me I have to do it either, but I would like the ability for those who already depend solely on Medicare to have the opportunity to plan appropriately.

That service is already provided for..of course by nurses and social workers in both hospitals and nursing homes for free... and many other places.. even in doctors offices, imagine that..

I have been through the whole, "we can't find the DNR so it's your sole call to pull the plug," thing with my dad. It's not a fun experience. While you still have to give the ok, it's much easier when you (and the rest of the family) know EXACTLY what your loved one wanted.

So have I.. and we had copies made and one even taped to the kitchen cabinet..what did you do? I tell you what, I had to make that decision, because my mom was took upset to do it.. hardest damn thing I ever did..
But I made a promise to my dad and I keep my promises. my brother wimped out and left it to the baby of the family to do the right thing.

I have made it very very very clear to my kids, over many years what my wishes are.. even without a DNR.. I have a living will.. so does my son and dtr.. a Living Will is much different than a DNR.. It spells out exactly what you wish to be done and not done. a DNR simply states that if you croak, you croak.. What if you could be resusitated and go on to live another 30 yrs.. something to think about..

I do not support any part of this bill in any shape way or fashion.. never will..

FCWood

08-13-2009, 20:56

It has been my experience, in a 30 yr nursing career, that MD's rarely even bring up the subject. It is done by the patient, and then usualy to get the MD to sign the order. If an MD would refuse to talk to my mom about a DNR because her Tricare for Life/Medicare/State of Fla employee insurance won't pay.. he would never see her or me again.. any MD that did that is acting unethically.

I would leave a doctor who wouldn't talk with my mom also. I'm just stating what was discussed about on the radio program. I think it's unethical for a doctor to refuse to talk also. However, there are doctors out there who care about money more so than patients.

I am speechless... words fail me... ...:mad: what an elitist comment.. good lord..

I was only talking about income not social standing. I was stating that, according to the article, lower income earning families sometimes have a hard time consulting with a doctor about a DNR. I never said I considered myself or my family higher than lower class. Since my father's death my mom and I have been unable to afford health insurance until the last two months.

That service is already provided for..of course by nurses and social workers in both hospitals and nursing homes for free... and many other places.. even in doctors offices, imagine that..

Yes, it can be found free, but clearly some think it's a problem for certain income groups. Just because it is provided for free doesn't mean every member of a region knows about it. If a patients family doctor refuses to talk with them unless they can pay who do they turn to? Not everyone knows the resources may be just down the block for free.

So have I.. and we had copies made and one even taped to the kitchen cabinet..what did you do? I tell you what, I had to make that decision, because my mom was took upset to do it.. hardest damn thing I ever did..
But I made a promise to my dad and I keep my promises. my brother wimped out and left it to the baby of the family to do the right thing.

I have made it very very very clear to my kids, over many years what my wishes are.. even without a DNR.. I have a living will.. so does my son and dtr.. a Living Will is much different than a DNR.. It spells out exactly what you wish to be done and not done. a DNR simply states that if you croak, you croak.. What if you could be resusitated and go on to live another 30 yrs.. something to think about..

I do not support any part of this bill in any shape way or fashion.. never will..

I understand the difference. My father filed his with the hospital he was in just before having surgery to remove a blockage in his right carotid artery. The surgery went awry and nine days later he died. In the mean time the hospital lost the forms. We knew exactly what dad wanted. I'm merely saying that for some families who don't discuss those things it would be good to create one (and store it in a fire-resistant safe) if unwilling or unable to discuss it with family members.

I'm not saying I'm for the bill. I think something needs to happen for those who cannot afford health insurance or are forced to use the ER in place of a family doctor. I do think that those who make little money (what i was referring to with the term lower class) like the elderly should have the opportunity to get DNR advice from their physician. However, it is a same that some doctors won't do this for free.

Again, I'm merely repeating the information. Apparently, the AMA and AARP think there's a problem and therefore support paid DNR counseling for those with Medicare and such.

FCW

Praetorian

08-13-2009, 23:06

I disagree.

Cost containment is quickly going to be a factor when they realize just how much this costs.

"High-risk, low-reward" people are going to be encouraged to forego expensive measures in the last few months of their lives.

Bet on it.

Do you think that people initially thought that income taxes were going to consume 30% or more of their paychecks? How about Social Security and Medicare eating up so much and the money being spent for so many other projects? They lure you in with a small claim and a big promise, and it gets worse from there. They are experts at boiling the frog just slowly enough to keep him from jumping out of the pot before he is cooked.

TR
Obama in his own words.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWJrlFnM5jo

Pete

08-14-2009, 05:56

Obamacare & Death Boards

Coming to America soon.

1,000 cancer patient 'refused treatment'

More than 1,000 cancer patients have been refused drugs in the past three years because the medication was not licensed for their disease, new figures suggest.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6023407/1000-cancer-patient-refused-treatment.html

Now help me out here. If a non-medical board looks at your case and says "no" to a treatment because of cost or it's not approved but it might save your life and you die couldn't your relatives call that a Death Board?

Right here in the US we have government and private insurance companies that refuse new treatments or drugs because they're not "proven". But they catch hell in the press when they do.

Coming soon to America - "Shuffle off and die you old fart. Help us save some money."

Richard

08-14-2009, 06:16

Shuffle off and die you old fart.

Ahhh...nothing like a return to those good old days!* :rolleyes:

And so it goes... ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

* The historically documented past - not the perceived one so many seem to yearn.

The Reaper

08-14-2009, 07:32

IMHO, there is not going to be anything as odious as a death board.

What you are going to see is triaging and waits for procedures.

If you are elderly, and are diagnosed with something terminal, you are going to be put in the queue AFTER younger patients and those deemed more worthy of immediate care. Your procedure will never be denied, but it will be a low priority at the treatment facility. A seventy-five year old man with Stage 4 cancer will likely be given palliatives, put in hospice care, and will die before he ever gets the chemo.

Cold to say, but if I was seventy-five, and there was only enough funding to treat me, or my grandchild with the same disease, I think I know what I would do.

Life is terminal.

TR

Pete

08-14-2009, 07:40

.......Cold to say, but if I was seventy-five, and there was only enough funding to treat me, or my grandchild with the same disease, I think I know what I would do.

Life is terminal.

TR

I'm pretty sure thats not the case today here in the US today. None of the "you or you" stuff. But if things change then the question becomes "why did we do this?"

Team Sergeant

08-14-2009, 09:03

Something else being over looked obama said and I quote: "If you like your doctor you will not have to change."

Guess what, a whole lot of doctors are NOT going to accept "obamacare" insurance. If you're on obamacare many will be "forced" to change doctors.

This train wreck hasn't even started yet......

The Reaper

08-14-2009, 09:14

armymom1228

08-14-2009, 11:41

Roger that.

We have to drive over 60 miles to see a dermatologist for our kids' skin rashes because the one three miles from the house (and across the street from the referring physician) will not take Tricare patients anymore, apparently because the reimbursement rates are tied to Medicare/Medicaid.

Welcome to socialized medicine.

TR

Yep.. same with Mom. Eye doc in Crystal River, who trained at the Richard Bascomb Clinic in Miami and has pts from all over the globe see him. He wont take her tricare or her medicare or her state of fla employee insurace. She goes 60 miles each way to the Univ of Fla clinics in Gainesville. It means, for me, since she no longer drives..I have to fly home, rent a car and drive her to and from Gainesville, drive back to Tampa hop a flight into DC and go home.. all in one day or at the most two every three months. I have been doing this for the past 3 yrs. I was ecstatic when my dtr informed me this week she wants her dtr to attend the same elementary school she attened in Crystal River and is house hunting. It means no more flights for me, except to visit.

TR, I totaly agree with you about the 75 yr old with terminal cancer. Let me offer this scenario. 75 yr old, vibrant, not a terminal disease still able to do for themselves but needs a minor procedure that would extend their life and ability to provide for themselves. Yet due to age alone is put at the bottom of the stack.

I run into more and more, older people that are talked into the whole chemo/radiation thing by thier families and the docs because the family has trouble letting go. The docs and thier attendent facilities make huge dollars on treating any cancer patient. It is a money driven cash cow that no one is willing to quit sucking the money teat to fix.

VVVV

08-31-2009, 12:39

Health Care Fit for Animals

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: August 26, 2009

Opponents suggest that a “government takeover” of health care will be a milestone on the road to “socialized medicine,” and when he hears those terms, Wendell Potter cringes. He’s embarrassed that opponents are using a playbook that he helped devise.

“Over the years I helped craft this messaging and deliver it,” he noted.

Mr. Potter was an executive in the health insurance industry for nearly 20 years before his conscience got the better of him. He served as head of corporate communications for Humana and then for Cigna.

He flew in corporate jets to industry meetings to plan how to block health reform, he says. He rode in limousines to confabs to concoct messaging to scare the public about reform. But in his heart, he began to have doubts as the business model for insurance evolved in recent years from spreading risk to dumping the risky.

Then in 2007 Mr. Potter attended a premiere of “Sicko,” Michael Moore’s excoriating film about the American health care system. Mr. Potter was taking notes so that he could prepare a propaganda counterblast — but he found himself agreeing with a great deal of the film.

A month later, Mr. Potter was back home in Tennessee, visiting his parents, and dropped in on a three-day charity program at a county fairgrounds to provide medical care for patients who could not afford doctors. Long lines of people were waiting in the rain, and patients were being examined and treated in public in stalls intended for livestock.

“It was a life-changing event to witness that,” he remembered. Increasingly, he found himself despising himself for helping block health reforms. “It sounds hokey, but I would look in the mirror and think, how did I get into this?”

Mr. Potter loved his office, his executive salary, his bonus, his stock options. “How can I walk away from a job that pays me so well?” he wondered. But at the age of 56, he announced his retirement and left Cigna last year.

This year, he went public with his concerns, testifying before a Senate committee investigating the insurance industry.

“I knew that once I did that my life would be different,” he said. “I wouldn’t be getting any more calls from recruiters for the health industry. It was the scariest thing I have done in my life. But it was the right thing to do.”

Mr. Potter says he liked his colleagues and bosses in the insurance industry, and respected them. They are not evil. But he adds that they are removed from the consequences of their decisions, as he was, and are obsessed with sustaining the company’s stock price — which means paying fewer medical bills.

One way to do that is to deny requests for expensive procedures. A second is “rescission” — seizing upon a technicality to cancel the policy of someone who has been paying premiums and finally gets cancer or some other expensive disease. A Congressional investigation into rescission found that three insurers, including Blue Cross of California, used this technique to cancel more than 20,000 policies over five years, saving the companies $300 million in claims.

As The Los Angeles Times has reported, insurers encourage this approach through performance evaluations. One Blue Cross employee earned a perfect evaluation score after dropping thousands of policyholders who faced nearly $10 million in medical expenses.

Mr. Potter notes that a third tactic is for insurers to raise premiums for a small business astronomically after an employee is found to have an illness that will be very expensive to treat. That forces the business to drop coverage for all its employees or go elsewhere.

All this is monstrous, and it negates the entire point of insurance, which is to spread risk.

The insurers are open to one kind of reform — universal coverage through mandates and subsidies, so as to give them more customers and more profits. But they don’t want the reforms that will most help patients, such as a public insurance option, enforced competition and tighter regulation.

Mr. Potter argues that much tougher regulation is essential. He also believes that a robust public option is an essential part of any health reform, to compete with for-profit insurers and keep them honest.

As a nation, we’re at a turning point. Universal health coverage has been proposed for nearly a century in the United States. It was in an early draft of Social Security.

Yet each time, it has been defeated in part by fear-mongering industry lobbyists. That may happen this time as well — unless the Obama administration and Congress defeat these manipulative special interests. What’s un-American isn’t a greater government role in health care but an existing system in which Americans without insurance get health care, if at all, in livestock pens.

•

The Reaper

08-31-2009, 13:29

Well, that is certainly an unbiased perspective....:rolleyes:

How about figuring out how many people do not currently have coverage and why, then trying to figure out how to fix it, short of a public option, which forces the majority of Americans (86%) to pay for a small minority who can afford to, but choose not to buy health insurance, those who are not entitled to it (illegals), or who have an unhealthy lifestyle (HIV, obesity, drug abusers, smokers, etc.). Those who really cannot afford it are largely covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP and are a small minority. The truly uninsurable should be able to buy insurance or be covered by one of the above agencies.

I realize that a far left lib like Mr. Kristof would prefer the socialist, "public option", and eventually "single payer" where we pay the price to insure everyone.

TR

VVVV

08-31-2009, 14:09

Well, that is certainly an unbiased perspective....:rolleyes:

And, of course there's no bias to yours. :rolleyes:

The Reaper

08-31-2009, 14:10

And, of course there's no bias to yours. :rolleyes:

Please, elaborate on my bias.

TR

GratefulCitizen

08-31-2009, 22:33

The president proclaimed his own audacity in his book.
From the socialist's perspective, he did one thing very right: he thought big.

The giant power grab gives him room to slide back and "compromise", while still continuing the steady march towards socialism.
The proof of effectiveness in the fact that opponents are conceding that some "reforms" are necessary.

Opponents need to take the anti-socialism sentiment and go on offense.
Think big.

Forget coming out with some sort of reasonable reaching-across-the-isle nonsense.
Take the tea party rallies directly to the State governments and appeal for a Constitutional convention with aim at a few, simple amendments.

Abolishment the commerce clause, abolishment the 16th amendment, and the imposition of term limits might be a good starting point.
Think big.

The debate should not be about how much power will be ceded to the federal government.
The debate should be about how much power will be taken from the federal government.

Starting from there, perhaps a reasonable compromise could be reached.

The best defense is a good offense.

SF-TX

09-16-2009, 18:55

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

By TERRY JONES, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09/15/2009 07:09 PM ET

IBD Exclusive Series:
Condition Critical: What Doctors Think About Health Reform

Two of every three practicing physicians oppose the medical overhaul plan under consideration in Washington, and hundreds of thousands would think about shutting down their practices or retiring early if it were adopted, a new IBD/TIPP Poll has found.

The poll contradicts the claims of not only the White House, but also doctors' own lobby — the powerful American Medical Association — both of which suggest the medical profession is behind the proposed overhaul.

It also calls into question whether an overhaul is even doable; 72% of the doctors polled disagree with the administration's claim that the government can cover 47 million more people with better-quality care at lower cost.

The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in, and doctors' positions on related topics — including the impact of an overhaul on senior care, medical school applications and drug development — will be covered later in this series.

Major findings included:

• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration's claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul.

It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a "majority of physicians want public and private insurance options," and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday's front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline "Doctors Go For Obama's Reform."

Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the "association representing the nation's physicians" and what "many still regard as the country's premier lobbying force" — is "lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama's sweeping plan."

The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA's support of Democrats' proposed health care overhaul.

• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.

• More than seven in 10 doctors, or 71% — the most lopsided response in the poll — answered "no" when asked if they believed "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better."

This response is consistent with critics who complain that the administration and congressional Democrats have yet to explain how, even with the current number of physicians and nurses, they can cover more people and lower the cost at the same time.

The only way, the critics contend, is by rationing care — giving it to some and denying it to others. That cuts against another claim by plan supporters — that care would be better.

IBD/TIPP's finding that many doctors could leave the business suggests that such rationing could be more severe than even critics believe. Rationing is one of the drawbacks associated with government plans in countries such as Canada and the U.K. Stories about growing waiting lists for badly needed care, horror stories of care gone wrong, babies born on sidewalks, and even people dying as a result of care delayed or denied are rife.

In this country, the number of doctors is already lagging population growth.

From 2003 to 2006, the number of active physicians in the U.S. grew by just 0.8% a year, adding a total of 25,700 doctors.

Recent population growth has been 1% a year. Patients, in short, are already being added faster than physicians, creating a medical bottleneck.

The great concern is that, with increased mandates, lower pay and less freedom to practice, doctors could abandon medicine in droves, as the IBD/TIPP Poll suggests. Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for — an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors. The actual effect could be somewhat less because a significant share of the uninsured already get care.

Even so, the government vows to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from health care spending to pay for reform, which would encourage a flight from the profession.

The U.S. today has just 2.4 physicians per 1,000 population — below the median of 3.1 for members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the official club of wealthy nations.

Adding millions of patients to physicians' caseloads would threaten to overwhelm the system. Medical gatekeepers would have to deny care to large numbers of people. That means care would have to be rationed.

"It's like giving everyone free bus passes, but there are only two buses," Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told the Associated Press.

Hope for a surge in new doctors may be misplaced. A recent study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found steadily declining enrollment in medical schools since 1980.

The study found that, just with current patient demand, the U.S. will have 159,000 fewer doctors than it needs by 2025. Unless corrected, that would make some sort of medical rationing or long waiting lists almost mandatory.

Experiments at the state level show that an overhaul isn't likely to change much.

On Monday came word from the Massachusetts Medical Society — a group representing physicians in a state that has implemented an overhaul similar to that under consideration in Washington — that doctor shortages remain a growing problem.

Its 2009 Physician Workforce Study found that:

• The primary care specialties of family medicine and internal medicine are in short supply for a fourth straight year.

• The percentage of primary care practices closed to new patients is the highest ever recorded.

• Seven of 18 specialties — dermatology, neurology, urology, vascular surgery and (for the first time) obstetrics-gynecology, in addition to family and internal medicine — are in short supply.

• Recruitment and retention of physicians remains difficult, especially at community hospitals and with primary care.

A key reason for the doctor shortages, according to the study, is a "lingering poor practice environment in the state."

In 2006, Massachusetts passed its medical overhaul — minus a public option — similar to what's being proposed on a national scale now. It hasn't worked as expected. Costs are higher, with insurance premiums rising 22% faster than in the U.S. as a whole.

"Health spending in Massachusetts is higher than the United States on average and is growing at a faster rate," according to a recent report from the Urban Institute.

Other states with government-run or mandated health insurance systems, including Maine, Tennessee and Hawaii, have been forced to cut back services and coverage.

This experience has been repeated in other countries where a form of nationalized care is common. In particular, many nationalized health systems seem to have trouble finding enough doctors to meet demand.

In Britain, a lack of practicing physicians means the country has had to import thousands of foreign doctors to care for patients in the National Health Service.

"A third of (British) primary care trusts are flying in (general practitioners) from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland" because of a doctor shortage, a recent story in the British Daily Mail noted.

British doctors, demoralized by long hours and burdensome rules, simply refuse to see patients at nights and weekends.

Likewise, Canadian physicians who have to deal with the stringent rules and income limits imposed by that country's national health plan have emigrated in droves to other countries, including the U.S.

Tomorrow: Why most doctors oppose the government's plan — in their own words.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199

SF-TX

09-16-2009, 20:47

ObamaCare: Status Quo on Steroids

Posted By Sheldon Richman

Let’s begin by noting that the so-called health-insurance companies deserve little sympathy. As they exist today, they are very much creatures of the State. In fact, there’s a sense in which it can be said that if we didn’t have health-insurance companies, we wouldn’t need them.

Economist William Niskanen writes [1], “We did not have a health care crisis in 1940 when few people had health insurance.” In fact, that year only 10 percent of Americans had such insurance (henceforth imagine ironic quotation marks). But World War II was a bonanza for the industry, especially Blue Cross Blue Shield. Government economic controls prohibited firms from attracting or keeping workers with higher wages. So someone hit on the idea of supplementing wages with noncash compensation, specifically, health insurance. The government said okay and the rest is history. Employee insurance was untaxed, creating a bias toward employer-provided health plans. If an employer bought a $5,000 plan for a worker, that worker got the full $5,000 benefit. But if the employer paid the worker $5,000 in cash, the worker would pocket $5,000 minus federal and state taxes. He’d need more than $5,000 to buy a $5,000 policy.

The government intervened in another way. According to Niskanen, “[T]ax and regulatory preferences for the Blues displaced the older form of commercial indemnity policies with policies providing cost-based reimbursement.” This act of social engineering — arrogant politicians and bureaucrats always think they know better than the collective wisdom stimulated by the free market — had huge (and presumably) unintended consequences that account for many of our current problems. Under the old-style indemnity plans (which individuals shopped and bought for themselves), contracting a catastrophic disease triggered a fixed insurance payment — to the policyholder – according to an agreed-on predetermined schedule. The money was hers. If she could find services that cost less than the insurance payment, she pocketed the difference. Of course, this provided an incentive to be cost-conscious in buying medical care. Homeowners’ and other types of insurance still works like this.

In contrast, under the Blue Cross Blue Shield model pushed by government — which began not as insurance but as a prepayment plan for doctors and hospitals — the policyholder never sees a dime. Treatment simply sets in motion a process in which the insurance company sends a check to a hospital, lab, or doctor. No treatment, no payment. The individual has no reason to shop around (there can be great variation in prices), or to question whether a test or procedure is necessary, or to even ask what anything costs. What’s the point? It would seem only to save the insurance company money.

The insurance companies take this into account when negotiating with providers and employers who buy coverage on behalf of their workers. A key problem here is the disconnect between cost and benefit (which would be aggravated by the Obama plan [2]). In most cases employers pay for their workers’ coverage with money that otherwise would have largely gone into cash wages. To the workers, it looks like free (or pretty cheap) coverage. Because of competition among employers and the rigged tax laws, coverage has become more luxurious, including services for situations that are not even insurable. A good example is maternity benefits. Pregnancy is not a disease, is largely preventable, and usually results from a volitional act. From a true insurance perspective, it’s ridiculous to expect coverage. (It would be like insurance against gaining weight.) The same could be said for many other “conditions” that are covered today. Well-baby care? Is that insurance against a baby’s being well? (Orwell was right: corrupt the language and one can get away with anything.)

State Mandates

To make matters worse, state governments have mandated that all “basic” policies include coverage for situations that are either uninsurable or unlikely to affect most people. Most people shopping for insurance in a free market would never buy this coverage because it would unnecessarily increase their costs. If they decided later on that they wanted, say, chiropractic or acupuncture, they would pay for it out of savings.

Writing in The Freeman, John Seiler [3] reported that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that “for every 1 percent increase in the cost of insurance, 200,000 to 300,000 people nationwide lose their insurance.” He adds, “State mandates keep about one quarter of Americans from getting health insurance, according to John C. Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market think tank.”

In 2007 the average number of mandates in the United States was 36, with a high of 62 (Minnesota) and a low of 13 (Idaho). Might this have something to do with the size of the uninsured population? The Great Humanitarians in Washington seem strangely incurious about that.

You and I could evade the mandate plague somewhat if we were free to buy policies offered in low-mandate states. But — under the federal McCarran-Ferguson Act [4] — we aren’t free. That 1945 decree shelters the states — and the insurance companies — from the interstate competition that might have reined in their regulatory regimes.

Do we have mandates because we are too dumb to know we need coverage for chiropractic, acupuncture, social workers, alcoholism and drug-abuse treatment, marriage counseling, hearing aids, toupees, contraceptives, and so on, ad infinitum? No. We have mandates because the providers of those products and services wined and dined enough state legislators to get these special-interest bills enacted. The insurance companies don’t mind: They can recover the cost from people who don’t realize they are paying for the “free” (or cheap) “services” because they think their bosses are paying for the coverage.

State regulation also sets up barriers to entry in the insurance industry. As a result, each state is a walled fortress that protects established insurance companies from competition. This doesn’t make their profits spectacular (see this [5]), but it creates safety and stability, which are worth something.

No Free Market

So no sympathy here for these state creatures of privilege and protection. We can safely guess that today’s companies look nothing like companies would look in a free insurance market. The federal and state governments — to some extent haphazardly — have almost completely determined the nature and shape of the industry, giving us a classic government-sponsored cartel.

But…

None of this justifies what President Obama and his ilk call healthcare “reform.” They merely propose more of what we already have: more “free” insurance for more people, more coverage for more uninsurable situations, lower out-of-pocket costs — all of which means less cost-consciousness and higher prices, which seeds the ground for price controls and rationing. In the name of creating competition, Obama would further suppress it, rather than dismantling the current anticompetitive regime.

The solution to the problems caused by what I’ve described above cannot be to encourage people to believe, childishly, that they have a right to health care — that is, a right to other people’s labor — or that resources are not scarce [6]. Yet that is what Obama & Co. are doing. A core principle of their scheme is that no one could be turned down for insurance because they are already sick. That’s not insurance; it’s welfare, [7]with the costs to all of us disguised and the politicians unaccountable.

The other night Obama also demanded that insurance companies cover preventive services — physical exams, colonoscopies, mammograms, etc. — for free. He also insists on low caps on out-of-pocket expenses and unlimited lifetime payouts.

But none of this is free. Someone will have to pay the doctors, clinics, and hospitals. Who? The answer is: the insurance companies. Where will they get the money?

One need not sympathize with the insurance companies to see that it it sheer demagoguery for Obama & Co. to rail sanctimoniously against them for not giving away their shareholders’ and employees’ money on demand. They’re businesses not charities. If the “reformers” think they can run a better company, let them try – in the free market. (That company executives favor most of Obama’s plans tells us that forcing people to buy insurance is worth more to them than the coverage mandates.)

By all means, strip the insurance companies of the privileges governments now provide. Throw them into the free market and let them fend for themselves. Open the gates to new entrepreneurs and innovators. But do not expand the rotten system that increases and hides costs while leading people to believe that medical care is manna from heaven. Pandering to people’s wish for free services ought to get a politician — even a president — hooted off the stage.

http://fee.org/articles/tgif/obamacare/

6.8SPC_DUMP

09-20-2009, 02:10

Obama: Legalize illegals to get them health care (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/18/obama-ties-immigration-to-health-care-battle/?feat=home_cube_position1 )

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won't cover illegal immigrants, but argued that's all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered - a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

GratefulCitizen

09-20-2009, 15:07

The current administration still doesn't realize that neither they nor their ideas were ever popular.
The were just relatively unknown.

The "empty vessel" strategy is nothing new in presidential elections.

An excerpt John Stuart Mill's "Representative Government" (1861),
chapter 7: "Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only."

...This is strikingly exemplified in the United States; where, at the election of President, the strongest party never dares put forward any of its strongest men, because every one of these, from the mere fact that he has been long in the public eye, has made himself objectionable to some portion or other of the party, and is therefore not so sure a card for rallying all their votes as a person who has never been heard of by the public at all until he is produced as the candidate. Thus, the man who is chosen, even by the strongest party, represents perhaps the real wishes only of the narrow margin by which that party outnumbers the other. Any section whose support is necessary to success possesses a veto on the candidate. Any section which holds out more obstinately than the rest can compel all the others to adopt its nominee; and this superior pertinacity is unhappily more likely to be found among those who are holding out for their own interest than for that of the public. The choice of the majority is therefore very likely to be determined by that portion of the body who are the most timid, the most narrow-minded and prejudiced, or who cling most tenaciously to the exclusive class-interest; in which case the electoral rights of the minority, while useless for the purposes for which votes are given, serve only for compelling the majority to accept the candidate of the weakest or worst portion of themselves.
...

The president and dims will not recover through the next couple of elections.

Part of the Rassmussen poll tells the tale: the "Strongly Disapprove" column.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history

Friends come and go.
Enemies accumulate.

incarcerated

09-20-2009, 18:20

Obama: Legalize illegals to get them health care (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/18/obama-ties-immigration-to-health-care-battle/?feat=home_cube_position1 )

IIRC, the Dems have a major (i.e. the same scale on which they are working on health care) immigration amnesty push on tap for 2013, after they clear a couple of elections, but before health care Reform is finalized and enacted.

Defender968

09-20-2009, 18:51

Richard

09-24-2009, 09:49

Personally, I have a lot of empathy with what this letter writer is saying.

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Why pay for the care of the careless?

During my last shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tatoos and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ring tone.

Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid.

She smokes a costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our president expects me to pay for this woman's health care?

Our nation's health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture - a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance.

Life is really not that hard. Most of us reap what we sow.

Starner Jones, MD

Jackson

http://m.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090823/OPINION02/908230304/1009/OPINION&template=wapart

Dr Jones is in the Emergency Medicine Department at Jeff Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian, MS.

http://www.jarmc.org/Doctors/index.cfm

frostfire

09-24-2009, 22:04

Personally, I have a lot of empathy with what this letter writer is saying.

And so it goes...;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Dr Jones is in the Emergency Medicine Department at Jeff Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian, MS.

http://www.jarmc.org/Doctors/index.cfm

I share that empathy as I have worked with and witnessed said clients ie. one who showed up with SOB (shortness of breath), then claim that she could not afford her medications while admitting the she must have her 3 packs of cigarettes a day.

Although it's not impossible, it is hard and emotionally draining to help those who do not and will not help themselves.

Having said these, I've learned the ill-effect of cynicism even when accompanined with good reason. I know of a nurse in a downtown ED who did a 16hours+ shift on night/day leading to July 4. Only July 3rd, apprently everything either does not open or closes very early. Every clinic, doctors' office etc. Guess what stays open throughout holidays and all? Yes, the Emergency Dept. So after morning filled with frequent flyers and folks with pain scale of 10/10 but could still leap out of bed, the ED was stormed with clients showing up to have TB test read since the clinic upstairs was closed. Then there's this one girl who showed up without the form, on which the TB reading was to be filled. The nurse rolled eyes in the back of the head, and wished she would just go back home (even if it's 2 hours away), get the form, and stop wasting everyone's time. Long story short, the girl was admitted. She had developed conjunctivitis, her rheumatoid arthritis was flaring, and had an overall toxic/weak appearance. Blinded by cynicism, the nurse missed all that, failed the test of humanity, and "betrayed" the license to care. The nurse was devastated and spent extra time after the shift ended putting blankets on patients in the waiting room.

armymom1228

10-01-2009, 20:19

My Congresswoman from Central Florida has been sending regular updates to her constituents about the Health Reform bill.. this latest is worth sharing

VOLUME 7, NUMBER 28
October 1, 2009

Put the Protection Back In: Keep Rationing Out of Health Care

President Obama, Congressional Democrats and groups like AARP have adamantly claimed that their health care reform bill, H.R. 3200, will not lead to the rationing of health care especially for the elderly. In the discussion daft of H.R. 3200, I was relieved to see language prohibiting rationing from the duties of the Health Benefits Advisory Committee. As you know, Democrats have given the Health Benefits Advisory Committee the power to decide which health benefits Americans will have access to if H.R. 3200 is signed into law.
To my shock and disappointment, this protective language was removed from the version introduced before Congress, leaving senior’s and all American’s health care vulnerable to the directives of an unelected, unaccountable board of bureaucrats. On Wednesday, the Minority staff of the Ways & Means Committee released a document which compared this section in the discussion draft of H.R. 3200 with the current version of the bill: it is evident that the rationing language has been omitted. With the President in campaign mode and AARP purchasing millions of dollars in television advertisements, all in an attempt to convince the American people that their health care will not be rationed, I ask this simple question, “what happened to this protective language?” If the President and AARP are serious about protecting and improving the health care benefits of all Americans, I expect that they will join me in calling for language prohibiting rationing to be included in any health reform package that is signed in to law.
What will the American public get, more promises or real action? Its time to improve health care for all Americans, Mr. President, and that includes our seniors and the more than ninety-five percent of Americans who already have health insurance.

It goes without saying, I guess, that Ginny is a Republican.

The Reaper

10-01-2009, 22:18

My Congresswoman from Central Florida has been sending regular updates to her constituents about the Health Reform bill.. this latest is worth sharing

It goes without saying, I guess, that Ginny is a Republican.

And a racist...

TR

Richard

10-16-2009, 17:37

WARNING: Difficult to swallow - may cause hypertension, shortness of breath, and choking.

SF0

10-16-2009, 18:14

WARNING: Difficult to swallow - may cause hypertension, shortness of breath, and choking.

Richard, where do you find all these excellent pictures? :D

6.8SPC_DUMP

10-22-2009, 18:18

Hoyer Says Constitution’s ‘General Welfare’ Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/55851)
(CNSNews.com) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that the individual health insurance mandates included in every health reform bill, which require Americans to have insurance, were “like paying taxes.” He added that Congress has “broad authority” to force Americans to purchase other things as well, so long as it was trying to promote “the general welfare.”

The Congressional Budget Office, however, has stated in the past that a mandate forcing Americans to buy health insurance would be an “unprecedented form of federal action,” and that the “government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

Hoyer, speaking to reporters at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday, was asked by CNSNews.com where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to mandate that a person must by a health insurance policy. Hoyer said that, in providing for the general welfare, Congress had “broad authority.”

“Well, in promoting the general welfare the Constitution obviously gives broad authority to Congress to effect that end,” Hoyer said. “The end that we’re trying to effect is to make health care affordable, so I think clearly this is within our constitutional responsibility.”

Hoyer compared a health insurance mandate to the government’s power to levy taxes, saying “we mandate other things as well, like paying taxes.”

The section of the Constitution Hoyer was referring to, Article I, Section 8, outlines the powers of Congress, including raising taxes, but not the purchasing any type of product or service. The opening paragraph of Section 8 grants Congress the power to raise taxes to, among other things, “provide for the … general welfare of the United States.”

Section 8 partly reads: “The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

The Constitution then details the specific powers of Congress, including raising an Army and Navy, regulating commerce between states, and to “make all laws necessary and proper” for the carrying out of these enumerated powers.

“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof,” concludes Section 8.

CNSNews.com also asked Hoyer if there is a limit to what Congress can mandate that Americans purchase and whether there is anything that specifically could not be mandated to purchase. Hoyer said that eventually the Supreme Court would find a limit to Congress’ power, adding that mandates that unfairly favored one person or company over another would obviously be unconstitutional.

“I’m sure the [Supreme] Court will find a limit,” Hoyer said. “For instance, if we mandated that you buy General Motors’ automobiles, I believe that would be far beyond our constitutional responsibility and indeed would violate the Due Process Clause as well – in terms of equal treatment to automobile manufacturers.”

OBAMA: REPUBLICANS 'DO WHAT THEY'RE TOLD' (http://www.breitbart.tv/do-what-theyre-told-obama-takes-swipe-at-republicans-during-nyc-fundraiser/#):munchin

Team Sergeant

12-09-2009, 09:47

I can hear "Professional Politicians" harry reid and nancy pelosi chatting about this "bill":

"If we pass this the citizens are going to fire every senator ouside of Calif and Massachusetts"

"Then we don't pass it and blame all on obama."

"good idea, he ain't going to see a second term anyway"

Democrats Reach Deal to Drop Government-Run Insurance Plan
AP

Senate Democrats strike tentative deal to drop a full-blown government-run insurance option from sweeping health care legislation, sources tell the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON -- After days of secret talks, Senate Democrats tentatively agreed Tuesday night to drop a full-blown government-run insurance option from sweeping health care legislation, several officials said, a concession to party moderates whose votes are critical to passage of President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

In its place, officials said Democrats had tentatively settled on a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage, with the possibility of greater government involvement if needed to ensure consumers of sufficient choices in coverage.

Additionally, the emerging agreement calls for Medicare to be opened to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, a significant expansion of the large government health care program that currently serves the 65-and-over population.

At a hastily called evening news conference in the Capitol, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., declined to provide details of what he described as a "broad agreement" between liberals and moderates on an issue that has plagued Democrats' efforts to pass health care legislation from the outset.

With it, he added with a smile, the end is in sight for passage of the legislation that Congress has labored over for months.

alright4u

02-03-2010, 15:06

Pictured below is a young physician by the name of Dr. Starner Jones. His short two-paragraph letter to the editor of his newspaper in Jackson , Mississippi accurately puts the blame on a "Culture Crisis" instead of a "Health Care Crisis".

It's worth a quick read:

Dear Mr. President:

During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.

While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as "Medicaid"! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer.

And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman's health care? I contend that our nation's "health care crisis" is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a "crisis of culture", a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one's self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that "I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me".

Once you fix this "culture crisis" that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you'll be amazed at how quickly our nation's health care difficulties will disappear.

Respectfully,
STARNER JONES, MD

Pete

06-06-2011, 17:48

Firms to cut health plans as reform starts: survey

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/firms-halting-coverage-as-reform-starts-survey-2011-06-06

"While only 7% of employees will be forced to switch to subsidized-exchange programs, at least 30% of companies say they will “definitely or probably” stop offering employer-sponsored coverage, according to the study published in McKinsey Quarterly.

The survey of 1,300 employers says those who are keenly aware of the health-reform measure probably are more likely to consider an alternative to employer-sponsored plans, with 50% to 60% in this group expected to make a change. It also found that for some, it makes more sense to switch................."

We told ya' so.

nmap

06-06-2011, 21:14

Firms to cut health plans as reform starts: survey

I strongly suspect that was the desired end. Control over health care provides powerful tools to both monitor and coerce individuals.

incarcerated

06-26-2011, 23:02

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/health/policy/27docs.html

U.S. Plans Stealth Survey on Access to Doctors

By ROBERT PEAR
Published: June 26, 2011
WASHINGTON — Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

Federal officials predict that more than 30 million Americans will gain coverage under the health care law passed last year. “These newly insured Americans will need to seek out new primary care physicians, further exacerbating the already growing problem” of a shortage of such physicians in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a description of the project prepared for the White House.

Plans for the survey have riled many doctors because the secret shoppers will not identify themselves as working for the government....

According to government documents obtained from Obama administration officials, the mystery shoppers will call medical practices and ask if doctors are accepting new patients and, if so, how long the wait would be. The government is eager to know whether doctors give different answers to callers depending on whether they have public insurance, like Medicaid, or private insurance, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield....
In response to the drumbeat of criticism, a federal health official said doctors need not worry because the data would be kept confidential. “Reports will present aggregate data, and individuals will not be identified,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the plan before its final approval by the White House.

Christian J. Stenrud, a Health and Human Services spokesman, said: “Access to primary care is a priority for the administration. This study is an effort to better understand the problem and make sure we are doing everything we can to support primary care physicians, especially in communities where the need is greatest.”

The new health care law includes several provisions intended to increase the supply of primary care doctors, and officials want to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of those policies.

Federal officials said the initial survey would cost $347,370....

In the mystery shopper survey, administration officials said, a federal contractor will call the offices of 4,185 doctors — 465 in each of nine states: Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. The doctors will include pediatricians and obstetrician-gynecologists.

The calls are to begin in a few months, with preliminary results from the survey expected next spring. Each office will be called at least twice — by a person who supposedly has private insurance and by someone who supposedly has public insurance.

Federal officials provided this example of a script for a caller in a managed care plan known as a preferred provider organization, or P.P.O.:

Mystery shopper: “Hi, my name is Alexis Jackson, and I’m calling to schedule the next available appointment with Dr. Michael Krane. I am a new patient with a P.P.O. from Aetna. I just moved to the area and don’t yet have a primary doctor, but I need to be seen as soon as possible.”

....Other mystery shoppers will try to schedule appointments for routine care, like an annual checkup for an adult or a sports physical for a high school athlete.

To make sure they are not detected, secret shoppers will hide their telephone numbers by blocking caller ID information.

Eleven percent of the doctors will be called a third time. The callers will identify themselves as calling “on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” They will ask whether the doctors accept private insurance, Medicaid or Medicare, and whether they take “self-pay patients.” The study will note any discrepancies between those answers and the ones given to mystery shoppers.

The administration has signed a contract with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to help conduct the survey.

Jennifer Benz, a research scientist at the center, said one purpose of the study was to determine whether the use of mystery shoppers would be a feasible way to track access to primary care in the future....