Senate Finance Committee Votes Against Government-Run Health Insurance Plan

The two votes marked a victory for Montana Democrat Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, who is hoping to push his middle-of-the-road measure through the panel by week's end. It also kept alive the possibility that at least one Republican may yet swing behind the overhaul, a key goal of both Baucus and the White House.

In a decisive vote that could forecast the demise of a proposed government health insurance plan, the Senate Finance Committee voted twice Tuesday against creating a "public option" that would compete with private companies.

The two votes marked a victory for Montana Democrat Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, who is hoping to push his middle-of-the-road measure through the panel by week's end. It also kept alive the possibility that at least one Republican may yet swing behind the overhaul, a key goal of both Baucus and the White House.

"My job is to put together a bill that gets to 60 votes" in the full Senate, Baucus said shortly before he joined a majority on the committee in defeating efforts to rewrite a key portion of his draft legislation. "No one shows me how to get to 60 votes with a public option," he said, using the term used to describe a new government role in health care. It would take 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to overcome any filibuster Republicans might attempt.

The first proposal failed in a 15-to-8 vote, which followed several hours of debate. The second proposal failed 13-10. Taken together, the votes were a defeat for liberal Democrats who view government-sponsored insurance for the middle class as a key component of President Obama's health care overhaul.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia proposed the first measure that was defeated by five Democrats, including Baucus, and all 10 committee Republicans.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York backed an alternative approach that he said would introduce more competition into the insurance market nationwide. His version differed from Rockefeller's chiefly in that it would have allowed for the government to negotiate payments with doctors, hospitals and other health care providers for an initial two-year period rather than pay them at the same rates as under Medicare.

The votes followed warnings by the Finance Committee's top Republicans that creating a government-run health insurance program would crush private companies.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sparred with Democrats on the Senate floor over the necessity of a public plan -- with Grassley saying lawmakers shouldn't take advantage of the shortcomings in the health care system to "denigrate" American health care.

Rockefeller proposed a plan modeled on Medicare, the federal health care program for senior citizens, in which the government would set what it pays doctors, hospitals and other medical providers. Schumer proposed a government plan that looks more like a private insurance company and negotiates payment rates with providers.

Republicans and moderate Democrats, meanwhile, stood their ground in opposition to a government plan that would compete for subscribers with private carriers.

Ensign was quick to pounce on Rockefeller's amendment, arguing that his idea for a public option would deny doctors participation in Medicare for two years if they choose not to participate in a new government program.

Rockefeller, saying 70 percent of doctors support a public option, defended his proposal. He said it will protect American families, and he dismissed assertions that it will lead to a government takeover of health insurance. "It will be optional. No one has to do this," he said.

Grassley reiterated his opposition to a government-run plan and challenged Rockefeller's 70-percent statistic, saying another poll showed that not even a majority of doctors would support a public option that weakened the private insurance industry.

The United States is the only developed nation that does not have a comprehensive national health care plan, leaving about 50 million people without health insurance. The government provides coverage for the poor and elderly, but most Americans rely on private insurance, usually received through their employers. Others buy their own insurance or pay steep medical bills out of pocket.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-ND, who has crafted an alternative plan that would set up a series of non-profit health care cooperatives, blasted Rockefeller's plan, saying, "The devil is in the details." Conrad said if the amendment is implemented, "every major hospital goes broke."

"I can't possibly support any amendment that does that," he said.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, said he could support a public option, but he disagrees with Rockefeller's approach. "I think there is a problem with providing Medicare reimbursement rates," Bingaman said, echoing the concerns of Conrad.

As senators continue to spar over the public option, two liberal groups are launching a hard-hitting television and Internet ad featuring a young father from Montana. Bing Perrine, 26, who needs a heart operation and is uninsured and deeply in debt, looks straight into the camera and asks Baucus: "Whose side are you on?"

The ad is sponsored by Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which say Baucus is too cozy with insurance and health care interests that have contributed to his campaigns and oppose a government plan.

Baucus aide Tyler Matsdorf said the ad falsely implies that the senator doesn't care about the plight of people with pre-existing health problems. It's just that Baucus would address such problems differently than the liberals, Matsdorf said. For example, his plan calls for nonprofit co-ops to compete with the insurance industry independently of the government. Insurers also oppose co-ops.

"Win or lose, it's clear that the strong public interest and support for a public option will be well represented by the supportive senators," said Gerald Shea, a top health care policy expert for the AFL-CIO labor federation. "My sense is that our message about how vital the public plan is to the critically important issue of cost control is beginning to break through the bubble that has surrounded Finance for months."

The wild card in Tuesday's debate is Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican. Aides say she's considering offering a compromise that would use the public option as a threat, to be deployed only if private insurers fail to keep premiums in check after a reasonable period of time.

If there's a final bill this year, it's possible that Snowe's idea will be the one to carry the day.

FOX News' Trish Turner and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

This is the Time to step up the pressure on Congress: Call, Fax and Email and Donate to Organization’s fighting with you

The GOP and Moderates are Fighting the Following

• We're going after taxpayer funding for ACORN and calling for a federal investigation of the left wing activist group. Our bill, the Defund ACORN Act, would make sure that taxpayers don't send another penny to this scandal-plagued outfit.
• We're promoting real health care solutions that will lower costs without adding to the deficit or creating a government-run "option." Our plan would rein in junk lawsuits that drive up costs and allow individuals and small businesses to pool together and buy insurance across state lines.
• We're demanding that Speaker Pelosi post all major bills online at least three days before a vote, giving lawmakers and the public time to know what's in them.
• And we're backing a proposal to end the bailouts once and for all, and stop Washington from picking winners and losers in the market.

Will 'Obamacare' Suffer a Carter Race Card Backlash? - Updated

Could anti-Semitic leftist former President Carter’s ridiculous comments about racism be the final nail in the Coffin of ObamaCare??

The national debate over health care reform has careered into the bumpy terrain of race.

Former President Jimmy Carter, some black lawmakers and some newspaper columnists have begun to call President Obama's opponents racist -- or fueled by racism -- and they are asserting that race is the underlying cause of much of the criticism of the president.

Obama's opponents, in turn, are charging the president's supporters with playing the race card -- using the issue of race for political gain.
"What Democrats are trying to do is shame white independents, who voted for President Obama in 2008 but are now uneasy about his policies, into supporting these policies to prove they are not racist," said Republican pollster and strategist David E. Johnson, who worked on Bob Dole's 1988 presidential campaign. Read The Full Article

EXCLUSIVE: Wilson: Carter's racism claims a distraction – former President Carter is the only person that has authored two books on his “must read list” – a bit scary!!

Dems and Liberals – Stop with the Race Card and the Political Correctness Game!!

Heritage Foundation says: Flawed Baucus Bill Is Not the Roadmap -Baucas Plan is the same old same old… just calling things by different names. So they are still selling us!!

Dick Morris says: BEWARE THE PUBLIC OPTION TRAP

As any good Persian rug dealer knows, you have to hold back a bargaining chit so that you can whip it out at the very end to tie down the sale. That's how Obama is playing the so-called public option in his health care program. His plan seems to be to combine its abandonment with some form of tort reform and try to buy off some Republicans - maybe only Maine's Olympia Snowe - to give moderate Democrats enough confidence in the veneer of bi-partisanship to win their backing for his bill.
But it's a fraud and a trick.

Here's why:
(a) Whether or not there is a public option makes no difference in the fundamental objection most elderly have to the bill - that it guts Medicare and Medicaid. All of the bills now under consideration cut these two programs by one half of a trillion dollars. And all of them require the medical community to serve thirty to fifty million new patients without any concomitant growth in the number of doctors or nurses. These cuts and shortages will lead to draconian rationing of medical care for the elderly, whether under a public option or not.

(b) The most likely proposal is to replace the public option with some form of buyer's co-op. But since there is no currently existing co-op to serve as a vehicle for health insurance, it would have to be formed. By who? The government, of course. That would mean, as a practical matter, that the "co-op option" would be a government run plan for several years. In fact, they may not get around to setting up a co-op at all.

(c) The other alternative, mentioned by Senator Snowe herself, would be for a "trigger" mechanism. This provision would require the creation of a public alternative to private insurance plans if, after a specified period of time, they did not lower rates to a pre-determined level. Given the escalation of health care costs, it is almost inevitable that this provision would lead to a government plan. And, anyway, who says that the government insurance option would be more successful in reducing costs?

But Obama has to at least appear to be willing to compromise, so he has invented the idea of re-packaging the public option in order to seem to be flexible.

The key, here, is not to be distracted by the debate over the public option. It matters very much to private insurance companies whether the government becomes their competitor, but, for the elderly (and the near-elderly), the key concern is not the public option by the rationing and cuts projected under the program.

In the Clinton Administration, we worked hard to kill the proposed Medicare cuts and are no less committed to stopping them in the Obama presidency. That they were once proposed by the right and are now being pushed by the left makes no difference. A cut is a cut is a cut. And Medicare should not be cut.

David Horowitz Calls Carter Anti-Semite - Osama Calls Him Friend

Hmmmm.... Perhaps people who live in Glass Houses should not throw stones.... Jimmy... Nancy... Van... Mr. President

I'm surprised and disappointed, Bill Cosby has fallen for Carter's 'Criticism is Racism' lie, or perhaps he has just been racked over the coals by liberal leaders of his own community, who hold their people down and spread the racism doctrine, one time too many??

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power/the Daily Thought Pad

Obama's Big Political Gamble

~~ Red-state Democrats are being asked to risk their seats ~~

Millions of Americans watched President Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress. Much of it was familiar, having been delivered in at least 111 speeches, town halls, radio addresses and other appearances on health care. But his most revealing remarks on the topic came on Monday, at a Labor Day union picnic in Cincinnati.

There Mr. Obama accused critics of his health reforms of spreading "lies" and said opponents want "to do nothing." These false charges do not reveal a spirit of bipartisanship nor do they create a foundation for dialogue. It is more like what you'd say if you are planning to jam through a bill without compromise. Which is exactly what Mr. Obama is about to attempt.

Team Obama is essentially asking congressional Democrats to take a huge gamble. The White House is arguing that ramming through a controversial bill is safer for Democrats than not passing anything. This is based on the false premise that the death of HillaryCare is what doomed Democrats in 1994. Mr. Obama told a reporter in July that the defeat of HillaryCare "Helped [Republicans] regain the House." Former President Bill Clinton echoed that thought recently by saying "doing nothing" today is "the worst thing we can do for the Democrats."

Actually, attempting to pass HillaryCare is what brought down the party. Voters rejected a massively complicated, hugely expensive government takeover of health care and the Democrats who pushed it.

In reality, it is riskier to be at odds with where Americans are than just standing by as an unpopular proposal goes down. The problem for Democrats is they are scaring voters by proposing a takeover of health care that spends too much money, creates too much debt, gives Washington too much power, and takes too much decision-making away from doctors and patients.

The political risk for Democrats is clearest among seniors. A late July Gallup poll showed they were the age group least likely to believe health-care reform would improve medical care. Seniors are coming out strongly against Mr. Obama's health-care plan even though they're already covered by government care. Perhaps it's because, as a White House fact sheet makes clear, he wants to pay for his plan's $948 billion cost over the next 10 years by cutting some $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid.

The latest Pew poll (August 20-27) found that 30% of seniors supported health-care reform while 54% were opposed. In July, Pew showed 29% in favor and 48% opposed. The same August Pew poll shows Republicans gaining 12 points among seniors on the generic ballot, compared to where they stood in the 2006 congressional elections. The generic ballot among seniors then was at 50% Democrat, 39% Republican. Today, it's 51% Republican and 43% Democrat.

This matters because seniors make up a disproportionate share of the off-year vote. CNN exit polls showed that they were roughly 16% of eligible voters in 2008, but 29% of the turnout in 2006. The generic ballot among seniors in 1994 was 45% Republican and 43% Democrat.

These numbers should worry red-state Democratic senators and the 70 Democratic congressmen whose districts were carried by John McCain or George W. Bush. The people back home are likely to punish Democrats if they vote for ObamaCare.

Already, many of them are drawing fire for having toed the party line on a stimulus package that's likely to celebrate its first anniversary with unemployment near 10%. They're also likely to be blasted for supporting a budget that doubles the national debt in five years, a new energy tax in the form of cap and trade, and a host of other liberal policies that voters did not expect from a candidate who ran as a centrist.

Until Ted Kennedy's vacant Massachusetts Senate seat is filled and there is confidence West Virginia's Robert Byrd is well enough to show up for a vote, there simply aren't 60 Senate Democrats to invoke cloture. That means Republicans will have considerable procedural sway, even if the White House isn't interested in giving them a real role by taking out a clean sheet of paper and starting over.

Given the Senate situation, do vulnerable House Democrats really want to go first in voting for ObamaCare? They've already done that by slamming through cap and trade, which is now stalled in the Senate. How much political capital will Speaker Nancy Pelosi have to spend to pass an increasingly unpopular health-care measure?

The danger for vulnerable Democrats is they have a president who is losing popularity while championing an unpopular proposal. The wise course would be to push for more time to figure out the best consensus policy and for more bipartisanship in crafting any solution.

Congressional Democrats will be under enormous pressure to stand with Mr. Obama. But the prospect of their own political future may yet concentrate many Democratic minds in Congress.

By Mr. Rove - the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. – Source WSJ

DEMOCRATS LOSING SENIORS

Nowhere is the fallout from Obama's healthcare proposals more evident than among the elderly, and nothing is more dangerous permanently for the Democratic Party than their increasing disaffection.
A Wall Street Journal poll taken last week reflects a gain by Republicans in party identification, closing the gap from 40-33 in April in favor of the Democrats to a Democratic margin of only 35-34. The data reflects that one-third of this six-point closure of the partisan gap comes from a major shift among the elderly -- the only demographic group to have moved dramatically.
In April, the elderly broke evenly on their party identification, with 37 percent supporting each political party. Now the Republicans hold a lead, at 46-33. This 13-point closure among the 14 percent of the vote that is cast by those over 65 represents two of the six points of closure nationally.

No other group changed nearly as much. Neither liberals nor minorities nor any other age group moved nearly as dramatically as did the elderly. The Journal's pollsters noted that "perhaps the most striking movement is with senior citizens."

The Democratic Party, led by Obama, is systematically converting the elderly vote into a Republican bastion. The work of FDR in passing Social Security in 1937 and of LBJ in enacting Medicare in 1965 is being undone by the president's healthcare program. The elderly see his proposals for what they are: a massive redistribution of healthcare away from the elderly and toward a population that is younger, healthier and richer but happens, at the moment, to lack insurance. (Remember that the uninsured are, by definition, not elderly, not young and not in poverty -- and if they are, they are currently eligible for Medicare, Medicaid or SCHIP and do not need the Obama program.) The elderly see the $500 billion projected cut in Medicare through the same lens as they viewed Gingrich's efforts to slice the growth in the program in the mid-1990s.

When the president addresses Congress and the nation on Wednesday night, he will likely indicate a willingness to compromise on aspects of his program. He might attenuate his support of the public option for insurance companies and could soften other aspects of his proposal as it is embodied in the House bill.

But the fundamental equation will not change: He is cutting Medicare spending and using the money to subsidize coverage of those who are now uninsured but cannot afford to pay full premiums. It is this equation that has the elderly up in arms.
And our seniors correctly understand that you cannot extend full health benefits to some portion of the 50 million who live here and lack insurance without causing rationing of existing health services unless you expand the number of doctors and nurses and the amount of medical equipment.

When President Harry Truman first proposed compulsory health insurance in 1949, he coupled his proposal with a big increase in federal aid to medical education. He grasped the fundamental reality that you cannot expand coverage without expanding the number of people who provide the service -- unless you are prepared to resort to wholesale rationing.

If Democratic senators and congressmen believe that the elderly will recover from their Republican tendencies by Election Day 2010 -- or even by 2012 or 2014 -- they misjudge their senior constituents. The elderly are the group most dependent on government services, and they follow politics with an attention that only the needy can give.

They will not forget if the Democrats push through cuts in Medicare and then ask for their support in the next election. Their memories are long and they turn out in huge numbers. Until now, these traits have worked to the advantage of the Democrats. Now they are increasingly likely to deliver Congress and the White House to the Republicans.

Related Posts:

• Fact Check: President Obama Repeats Falsehoods in Joint Session Speech
• Rep Joe Wilson – Let’s Move On
• Obama… “Will Call You Out”
• ObamaCare Speech: A Bust
• Dems Disregard of American’s Will and Rights: “Blue Dog” Refuses to Let Constituent Videotape Town Hall!
• Be Quiet America, Washington Knows Best
• Video - Jim DeMint to the President: Stop Speaking in Generalities and Defend your Health Plan (Honestly)

Posted: Daily Thought Pad – Cross-Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Lieberman: Without public option, health reform would pass – Americans: That will have to mean no co-op or “Trigger” that only means public option lat

Lieberman says major bipartisan reform is still possible. Let us make it does not include a “trigger”

U.S. Senator, Joseph Lieberman answers questions from the public over the internet during a live video interview session which was streamed over the Hearst Connecticut Media Group news sites. (Bob Luckey/Staff photographer)

STAMFORD -- U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman made it clear Wednesday that he would not vote for a health care bill that included a government-run option, but said that without it, he and most of Congress would support comprehensive health care reform.

Discussion on health care dominated an informal question-and-answer session with the fourth-term Connecticut senator, who spoke to the editors of The Advocate and Connecticut Post and answered e-mailed questions from readers.

If the public option "is off the table, we have the opportunity to achieve significant reform with bipartisan support," Lieberman said during the nearly two-hour meeting Wednesday afternoon.

The Stamford native touched on his concerns that in the current recession the country could not afford a complete health care overhaul.

"We're trying to do a lot at once," he said. "We're trying to bend down the increasing cost curve of health care, and at the same time, turn and say to people ... it will cost a trillion or a trillion-and-a-half over the next 10 years."

He said the people know who will foot the bill.

Still, comprehensive reform -- "big steps, not baby steps" -- is possible, Lieberman said, predicting that Congress will compromise and adopt 75 percent of what is in the bill.

Reform should also include malpractice reform and health exchanges, which would offer different plans for varying costs and coverage for individuals or small businesses, he said.

Lieberman added that he supports mandating that no one can be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions and that everyone be required to have health insurance.

As to how 47 million uninsured will afford coverage, Lieberman said only 12 million don't have insurance because they cannot afford it.

By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured, he said.

To arrive at his position, Lieberman said he reached out to "every conceivable group" in the state, including residents, providers, doctors and hospitals.

"People in Connecticut want to see health care reform," he said, "but (they) have growing apprehension that the proposed reform would leave them with less coverage than they have today."

The Democratic-turned-independent senator said he knows his opposition to the government-run option will probably foil the Democrats' efforts to pass the bill.

"There will be no shot at 60 votes, because I'm not the only one," he said.

But he added: "If we start this out and three years from now a case can be made that the private market is not working effectively, I would support the public option."

Staff Writer Devon Lash can be reached at 964-2242 or devon.lash@scni.com

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power – Cross-Posted: Daily Thought Pad

No Public Option

No Co-Op – Another Name for Public Option

No Trigger – Will Lead to Public Option

No – Duty To Die Lectures or Death Panels

No Centralized Database

ObamaCare and me – Doctor Zane F. Pollard, MD – For Anyone Who Still Doesn’t Believe in Rationing and Death Panels if ObamaCare Passes

I have been sitting quietly on the sidelines watching all of this national debate on healthcare. It is time for me to bring some clarity to the table by explaining many of the problems from the perspective of a doctor.

First off, the government has involved very few of us physicians in the healthcare debate. While the American Medical Association has come out in favor of the plan, it is vital to remember that the AMA only represents 17% of the American physician workforce.

I have taken care of Medicaid patients for 35 years while representing the only pediatric ophthalmology group left in Atlanta, Georgia that accepts Medicaid. For example, in the past 6 months I have cared for three young children on Medicaid who had corneal ulcers. This is a potentially blinding situation because if the cornea perforates from the infection, almost surely blindness will occur. In all three cases the antibiotic needed for the eradication of the infection was not on the approved Medicaid list.

Each time I was told to fax Medicaid for the approval forms, which I did. Within 48 hours the form came back to me which was sent in immediately via fax, and I was told that I would have my answer in 10 days. Of course by then each child would have been blind in the eye.

Each time the request came back denied. All three times I personally provided the antibiotic for each patient which was not on the Medicaid approved list. Get the point -- rationing of care.

Over the past 35 years I have cared for over 1000 children born with congenital cataracts. In older children and in adults the vision is rehabilitated with an intraocular lens. In newborns we use contact lenses which are very expensive. It takes Medicaid over one year to approve a contact lens post cataract surgery. By that time a successful anatomical operation is wasted as the child will be close to blind from a lack of focusing for so long a period of time.

Again, extreme rationing. Solution: I have a foundation here in Atlanta supported 100% by private funds which supplies all of these contact lenses for my Medicaid and illegal immigrants children for free. Again, waiting for the government would be disastrous.

Last week I had a lady bring her child to me. They are Americans but live in Sweden, as the father has a job with a big corporation. The child had the onset of double vision 3 months ago and has been unable to function normally because of this. They are people of means but are waiting 8 months to see the ophthalmologist in Sweden. Then if the child needed surgery they would be put on a 6 month waiting list. She called me and I saw her that day. It turned out that the child had accommodative esotropia (crossing of the eyes treated with glasses that correct for farsightedness) and responded to glasses within 4 days, so no surgery was needed. Again, rationing of care.

Last month I operated on a 70 year old lady with double vision present for 3 years. She responded quite nicely to her surgery and now is symptom free. I also operated on a 69 year old judge with vertical double vision. His surgery went very well and now he is happy as a lark. I have been told -- but of course there is no healthcare bill that has been passed yet -- that these 2 people because of their age would have been denied surgery and just told to wear a patch over one eye to alleviate the symptoms of double vision. Obviously cheaper than surgery.

I spent two years in the US Navy during the Viet Nam war and was well treated by the military. There was tremendous rationing of care and we were told specifically what things the military personnel and their dependents could have and which things they could not have. While I was in Viet Nam, my wife Nancy got sick and got essentially no care at the Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. She went home and went to her family's private internist in Beverly Hills. While it was expensive, she received an immediate work up. Again rationing of care.

For those of you who are over 65, this bill in its present form might be lethal for you. People in Britain face rationing of care in that there is an eight month wait for cataract surgery, 11 for hernia and the same for disc and total hip The government wants to mimic the British plan. For those of you younger, it will still mean restriction of the care that you and your children receive.

While 99% of physicians went into medicine because of the love of medicine and the challenge of helping our fellow man, economics are still important. My rent goes up 2% each year and the salaries of my employees go up 2% each year. Twenty years ago, ophthalmologists were paid $1800 for a cataract surgery and today $500. This is a 73% decrease in our fees. I do not know of many jobs in America that have seen this sort of lowering of fees.

But there is more to the story than just the lower fees. When I came to Atlanta, there was a well known ophthalmologist that charged $2500 for a cataract surgery as he felt the was the best. He had a terrific reputation and in fact I had my mother's bilateral cataracts operated on by him with a wonderful result. She is now 94 and has 20/20 vision in both eyes. People would pay his $2500 fee.

However, then the government came in and said that any doctor that does Medicare work cannot accept more than the going rate ( now $500) or he or she would be severely fined. This put an end to his charging $2500. The government said it was illegal to accept more than the government-allowed rate. What I am driving at is that those of you well off will not be able to go to the head of the line under this new healthcare plan, just because you have money, as no physician will be willing to go against the law to treat you.

I am a pediatric ophthalmologist and trained for 10 years post-college to become a pediatric ophthalmologist (add two years of my service in the Navy and that comes to 12 years). A neurosurgeon spends 14 years post-college, and if he or she has to do the military that would be 16 years. I am not entitled to make what a neurosurgeon makes, but the new plan calls for all physicians to make the same amount of payment. I assure you that medical students will not go into neurosurgery and we will have a tremendous shortage of neurosurgeons. Already, the top neurosurgeon at my hospital who is in good health and only 52 years old has just quit because he can't stand working with the government anymore. Forty-nine percent of children under the age of 16 in the state of Georgia are on Medicaid, so he felt he just could not stand working with the bureaucracy anymore.

We are being lied to about the uninsured. They are getting care. I operate at least 2 illegal immigrants each month who pay me nothing, and the children's hospital at which I operate charges them nothing also. This is true not only on Atlanta, but of every community in America.

The bottom line is that I urge all of you to contact your congresswomen and congressmen and senators to defeat this bill. I promise you that you will not like rationing of your own health.

Furthermore, how can you trust a physician that works under these conditions knowing that he is controlled by the state. I certainly could not trust any doctor that would work under these draconian conditions.

One last thing: with this new healthcare plan there will be a tremendous shortage of physicians. It has been estimated that approximately 5% of the current physician work force will quit under this new system. Also it is estimated that another 5% shortage will occur because of the decreased number of men and women wanting to go into medicine. At the present time the US government has mandated gender equity in admissions to medical schools .That means that for the past 15 years that somewhere between 49 and 51% of each entering class are females. This is true of private schools also, because all private schools receive federal funding.

The average career of a woman in medicine now is only 8-10 years and the average work week for a female in medicine is only 3-4 days. I have now trained 35 fellows in pediatric ophthalmology. Hands down the best was a female that I trained 4 years ago -- she was head and heels above all others I have trained. She now practices only 3 days a week.

(Now there will also be mandated racial equity in admissions… rather than admissions based on ability).

By Zane F Pollard, MD – American Thinker

Background: Dr. Zane F. Pollard
I did my undergraduate work at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. I graduated Tulane University medical School Alpha Omega Alpha ( medical school's top 10% of graduating class). Internship at the Univ. of Southern California in Los Angeles, one year of General surgery residency at the U. of California in San Francisco. Two years in the US Navy. Residency in Ophthalmology at the U.of S. California in Los Angeles, fellowship in pediatric Ophthalmology at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. In practice with Eye Consultants of Atlanta for the past 35 years. Published 90 papers in peer reviewed Scientific Ophthalmology Journals. Member of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, American Academy of Ophthalmology and the American Ophthalmological Society. Board certified in Ophthalmology.

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Barbara Wagner wanted to live, but Oregon Government-Run Healthcare would not pay for her cancer treatments. What they would do, was give her the meds for assisted suicide.

Video: Oregon says no to chemotherapy, offers assisted suicide instead

Read Full Story: Woman in Oregon Told Healthcare Would Not Pay for Cancer Treatment But Would Pay for Assisted Suicide… Welcome to Government Controlled Healthcare

---------------

Over the weekend the Veteran’s Manual was exposed

Full Article: Outcry Over Vets’ ‘End of Life Care’

Click here to read the "Your Life, Your Choices" guide.

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IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE

Washington is all atwitter about "death panels": President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the "death panel" charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president's plan.
Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome.

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:
* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.
* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care system-wide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.
* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.
Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

Order a copy of Catastrophe

In Britain, there is a total dollar amount that government will pay for each person.

• Prescription for Truth – Daniel Hannan From England: HealthCare Worse for Elderly
• Unease in Britain Following Assisted Suicides

Canadian Healthcare is going Bust…

The new president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Anne Doig, has made comments that indicate that Canada's public run healthcare system is running on empty.

We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize...We know that there must be change...We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands.

These comments come as the outgoing CMA President Dr. Robert Ouellet, is expected to report that Canada's government-run system needs to become more patient-centered.

Related Resources:

• Canadian Health Officials: Our Universal Health Care Is 'Sick,' Private Insurance Should Be Welcomed

• Overhauling health-care system tops agenda at annual meeting of Canada's doctors
• Healthcare: Does Canada Do It Better?

• And the list goes on… The more time we have to study ObamaCare and other government run healthcare systems, the more negative and scary information keeps surfacing.

Source: TrueHealthIsTrueWealth

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Sign The: 'STOP OBAMACARE' PETITION

Armey: We'll March on Washington Against Obamacare

Armey: “The public at large is dealing with the hostile takeover of the ‘heartfelt sector’ of the economy –– my personal healthcare. They [the government] want to take it over and they want to run it, and that is scary to the public at large.” (Getty Images)

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey is organizing a march on Washington against the Obama administration’s healthcare plan that he hopes will finally finish off the Democratic push for socialized medicine.

The march, organized by Armey’s political group FreedomWorks, is scheduled for Sept. 12 and is already generating hundreds of thousands of responses, the Texas Republican tells Newsmax.TV. The group isn’t providing transportation, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

See Video: Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey talks about the movement to defeat Obamacare - Click Here Now

“We had a guy the other day from Indiana that said, ‘I want to get there.’ When we explained that we don’t bus people into these things, he said, ‘No, a bunch of us are getting together and renting our own bus. We’re all coming,’” Armey told Newsmax.TV’s Ashley Martella.

“The fact is they want their voices to be heard and they are looking at a venue in which they can express it.”

Armey also told Newsmax that:

the agenda of Obama and the liberal leadership of Congress offers the GOP ample opportunity to take back control of the House and build ranks in the Senate in 2010.

Because lawmakers continually fear the charge of doing nothing, they can easily be stampeded by mass movements into crafting bad laws that can take years to fix.

the Democrat Party continually underestimates the public’s essential desire to be free to run their own healthcare.

the resistance to ObamaCare is similar to that of HillaryCare, in which voters revolted against Hillary Clinton’s attempt at healthcare reform in 1993-94.

The Democratic playbook is based very much on the teachings of former Obama mentor and radical organizer Saul Alinsky, who stressed that a movement must first create the impression of a crisis, then show the nation how big government and only big government alone has the solution to that crisis.

“The public at large is dealing with the same mass of hostile takeover of the ‘heartfelt sector’ of the economy –– my personal healthcare, Armey said. “They [the government] want to take it over and they want to run it, and that is scary to the public at large.”

Armey, one of the architects of the “Republican Revolution” and “The Contract with America,” which put the GOP in control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, tells Newsmax that FreedomWorks has been an active player in the resistance to the Democrats healthcare overhaul.

“We are very active,” Armey says. “We put up our own Web site that encourages people by way of letting them know where the town halls will be. Sometimes members of Congress aren’t very effective at communicating to the public at large that they are having a Town Hall meeting. They communicate to all their best personal friends, advisers and supporters that they are going to get together, and then they bill it as a Town Hall meeting when it is too late for others to get in.”

Armey, a former U.S. Representative from Texas's 26th congressional district (1985–2003), points to an incident in Florida where “by the time the public at large got there, the room was already filled up full of mostly labor people.”

Armey says FreedomWorks lets constituents know where Town Halls will be held and encourages them how to approach a member of Congress, how to conduct themselves, and to turn out.

Armey says that HillaryCare, in which voters revolted against Hillary Clinton’s attempt at healthcare reform in 1993-94, was in large part responsible for the Republican Revolution that swept the GOP into control of Congress.

“I think it’s pretty much the same thing,” Armey explains. I remember George Miller, who is now one of the leaders in Nancy Pelosi’s cabinet, growling at me in 1994 that the public is going to get [healthcare reform] whether they want it or not! That’s an underestimation of the will of the public that [the Democrats] continue to make, so, again, what they have is a new plan to take over the healthcare sector of the economy, and the public is reacting just as they did in 1994.”

Armey says Miller’s arrogance in that statement is absolutely one of the most stunning moments he ever had.

“The fact that a member of Congress would say the American people are going to get it whether they want it or not because we’ve been waiting 40 years to do this, I just sat there and looked at him and said, ‘Now wait a minute. Is this about us or is it about the nation and the nation’s people? Are we here to take care of what we’ve wanted for the last 40 years, or are we hear to take care of our constituents?’”

Armey calls the push for healthcare reform a harsh reflection of the arrogance of Congress –– what you might call “the audacity of conceit” among members of Congress. He predicts a grassroots backlash against Obama’s hostile government takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

“It’s already there,” Armey tells Newsmax. “These people are showing up at the Town Hall meetings. If you go to the FreedomWorks Web site you’ll see we are organizing a march on Washington on Sept. 12, and we are amazed at the number of people that want to sign up.”

The people have no choice but to raise their voice, Armey said, because Congress in recent years has been “stampeded” into making bad policy.

“Congress in recent years has shown itself to be perfectly capable of being stampeded like a bunch of lemmings off a cliff into making the wrong policy decisions because of their fear of being seen as the guy that did nothing,” Armey says. “That’s how we got things like TARP, the auto bailout and these massive takeovers and spending programs.”

Armey says that in September or October, in their frustration, the Obama administration ––along with its “auxiliary organizations in the press” –– will “create the illusion that we’ve got a flying flu outbreak that is greater and more dangerous than the bubonic plague, and they’ll stampede these guys into the votes.”

Armey finds Rahm Emmanuel’s “never let a good crisis go to waste” remark a joke.

“That cracked me up. One of the things about liberals that amuses me is those kind of moments where they slip and tell the truth. Every now and then when they do that, they give you a moment to remember, and Rahm Emmanuel gave us one there. I’m sure he was severely scolded by all his associates and colleagues, and reminded, ‘Rahm, in our philosophical framework, we don’t tell truths. That’s against the law.’”

Armey believes that given the agenda of Obama and the liberal leadership of Congress, Republicans stand a good chance at taking back control of the House and at diminishing their disadvantage in the Senate in 2010.

“I think there’s a very big chance,” he says. “All the electoral cards are stacked against [the Democrats] in 2010. It’s a crucial year for liberty in my estimation because, as you know, in the year 2010 when they conduct the census, you’re going to have the most crooked census in the history of the nation.

“I’m laughing at these guys. They are going to say, ‘We’re going to use a method called sampling, and they way that works is we put all the congressional district maps on a table and we take a look at the different maps and how we’d like them to be and who we’d like to be in the different districts. Then we’ll decide what the populations will be. And they send ACORN out to do the canvassing.

“I don’t know what this ACORN outfit is, but I’ve got to tell you, they [have their hands] in everything that comes through Congress these days, and there’s money for ACORN in it. There’s money for ACORN in this healthcare bill. I don’t get it. Saul Alinsky must be a genius –– he made doctors out of all these social activists.”

See Video: Fomer House Majority Leader Dick Armey talks about the movement to defeat Obamacare - Click Here Now

By: Rick Pedraza

‘The Goal’ needs to be:

1. *Dump all 5 of the present bills being looked at in Congress (Both Houses)
2. No Public Option of any kind and that includes the new Co-Op Idea Co-Op = Public Option = Single Payer (whether immediately or in a 2 or 3 step process)
3. No Rationing
4. Fix the system we have now…

• Invoke serious tort reform… stopping frivolous lawsuits and restricting the awards
• Clean up Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs and Reservation Benefits… by controlling fraud and waste.
• Do not cover abortions with public funds
• Do not cover people in the United State illegally
• Allow individuals and small businesses to for groups and consortiums to get better rates
• Allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines
• Allow portable coverage (allowing you to take your insurance with you when you leave a job or move)
• Pay on results not on number of procedures
• No more exclusions because of pre-existing conditions by insurance companies
• Crack-down on insurance fraud
• Allow coverage of natural supplements, natural and holistic procedures like chiropractic care, acupuncture etc by insurance coverage
• Force Big Pharma to honor price reduction they offered Team Obama
• Allow generic medications to be covered by insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, etc.
• Allow sharing of information and encourage the reduction of duplication of records… but not kept and managed by the government or in a central database by a company like GE, who is in bed with Team Obama. In today’s world if large companies and groups like Kaiser, Blue Cross, Medicaid, Cigna etc kept their own central databases, forwarding information electronically or giving a copy to the patient to hand carry to avoid the duplication of procedures or tests is and would be easy. Perhaps some the unspent stimulus money could go toward helping some of these companies updating their record systems, which would also create some permanent and temporary jobs. A central database of everyone’s information is just to tempting for future problems.

If the above measures were enacted, we could pay for the 5 to 8 million who are not insured and not are insurable, lower or at least maintain our costs without changing the quality of our medical care in the United States, keep additional government intrusion out of our lives and prevent rationing.

Add to this the ideas of dozens and dozens of present and ex-Governors, Senators and Congress people plus CEO’s of companies and experts in economics and medical care from the financial end, we could perhaps level the cost increase for a few years and improve our care for everyone.

Everyone agrees that we need some kind of reform. This kind of reform, not the ObamaCare versions (any of them)

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Healthcare Benefits Advisory Committee Determines What Is Covered - Which Is Worrisome if You Understand Obama Administrations Healthcare Advisors Per

IT'S ALL A DEATH PANEL: THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMACARE

Washington is all atwitter about "death panels": President Obama derides the idea that his health-care reform calls for them; the Senate is stripping "end of life" counseling language from its bill -- and last Friday the voice of the liberal establishment, The New York Times, ran a Page One story "rebutting" the rumor that ObamaCare would create such boards to decide when to pull the plug on elderly patients.

But all those protests miss the fundamental truth of the "death panel" charge.

Even without a federal board voting on whom to kill, ObamaCare will ration care extensively, leading to the same result. This follows inevitably from central features of the president's plan.
Specifically, his decisions to (1) pay for reform with vast cuts in the Medicare budget and (2) grant insurance coverage to 50 million new people, vastly boosting demand without increasing the supply of doctors, nurses or other care providers.

Whether or not he admits it even to himself, Obama's talk of cutting "inefficiencies" and reducing costs translates to less care, of lower quality, for the elderly. Every existing national health system finds ways to deny state-of-the-art medications and necessary surgical procedures to countless patients, and ObamaCare has the nascent mechanisms to do the same. With the limited options that Obama's vision would leave them, many will find that "end of life counseling" necessary and even welcome.

"Reform" would cut care to the elderly in several ways:
* Slash hundreds of billions from Medicare spending, largely by lowering reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals for patient care.

If a hospital gets less money for each MRI, it will do fewer of them. If a surgeon gets paid less for a heart bypass on a Medicare patient, he'll perform them more rarely. These facts of the marketplace are not only inevitable consequences of Obama's cuts but are also its intended consequence. Without them, his savings will prove illusory.
* Expanding the patient load by extending full coverage to 50 million Americans (including such "Americans" as illegal immigrants) without boosting the supply of care will force rationing decisions on harried and overworked doctors and hospitals.

People with insurance use a lot more health-care resources -- so today's facilities and personnel will have to cope with the increased workload. Busy surgeons will have to decide who would benefit most from their treatment -- de facto rationing. The elderly will, inevitably, be the losers.

* The Federal Health Board, established by this legislation, will be charged with collecting data on various forms of treatment for different conditions to assess which are the most effective and efficient. While the bills don't force providers to obey the board's "guidance," its recommendations will still wind up setting the standards and protocols for care system-wide.

We've already seen Medicare and Medicaid lead a similar race to the bottom with their formularies and other regulations. With Washington dictating what every policy must cover and regulating all rates, insurers and providers will all have to follow the FHB's advice on limiting care to the elderly -- a de facto rationing system.
* In assessing whether to allow certain treatments to a given patient, medical professionals will be encouraged to apply the Quality-Adjusted Remaining Years system. Under QARY, decision-makers seek to "amortize" the cost of treatment over the remaining "quality years of life" likely for that patient.
Imagine a hip replacement costing $100,000 and the 75-year-old who needs it, a diabetic with a heart condition deemed to have just three "quality" years left. That works out to $33,333 a year -- too steep! Surgery disallowed! (Unless of course, the patient has political connections . . . )

Younger, healthier patients would still get the surgery, of course. The QARY system simply aims to deny health care to the oldest and most infirm, "scientifically" condemning them to infirmity, pain and earlier death than would otherwise be their fate.

In short, ObamaCare doesn't need to set up "death panels" to make retail decisions about ending the lives of individual patients. The whole "reform" scheme is one giant death panel in its own right.

Order a copy of Catastrophe

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

REP. TOM PRICE ADMONISHES GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER OF HEALTHCARE

Rep. Tom Price of Georgia admonishes the Democrat government-takeover of health care. Support a real reform for health care. Congressman Price was a 25-year practicing doctor before running for offce.

tom.house.gov rsc.price.house.gov (July 16, 2009)

There are former doctors in both the House and the Senate. There are present and former Congressman, Senators and Governors that have experience with healthcare reform and there are companies like SafeWay, whose CEO’s testified before Congress. There are also Senators, Congressmen and others with common sense. None of their ideas are being listened to were used as part of any of the Healthcare Reform Bills that I have seen.

Stand-up America and don’t let the present bills pass. As Daniel Hannan of Britain and representative to the EU parliament says, “Once we put socialized medicine into affect there is almost no going back.

Related Resources:

• Rep. Tom Price tells Obama to stop playing the health care blame – video
• Congressman Price Debates Health Care with Ed Schultz – video
• Prescription for Truth – Daniel Hannan From England: HealthCare Worse for Elderly - video
• DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE 1000 PAGE HEALTH CARE PLAN BY AND ATTORNEY & DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF LAW
• *Letter to Your Congress Person on Health Care (Obamacare) HR3200
• *A Look at What is Really in the Health Care Bill (HR 3200): Chilling!
• Woman in Oregon Told Healthcare Would Not pay for Cancer Treatment But Would Pay for Assisted Suicide… Welcome to Government Controlled Healthcare
• Obamacare for Illegal Aliens – While Granny Gets Duty to Die Lecture
• What Would Ronnie Do? – Krauthammer on Healthcare
• Kristol: Kill It, And Start Over
• Socialized Medicine Update – From Congressman John Campbell’s Laptop to Yours
• Senator Grassley (and others): Democrats Want to Nationalize Healthcare
• Safeway’s Health Care Program Gets Attention
• Kennedy: Let’s Ration Healthcare
• Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer Say Citizens Exercising Their First Amendment Rights Are “Un-American”… The Desperation is Showing!
• Catholics Fear ‘Stealth’ Abortion Push in Healthcare… Could Add to Doctor and Hospital Shortages
• HR 3200 Kills the Private Insurance Industry
• Little Girl A Plant at Obama HealthCare Town Hall… Wow, Did You Not Learn Your Lesson With the Last Plant, Mr. President?
• The Community Organizer Doesn’t Like People Organizing???
• White House Initiates “Snitch” Program On What They Call Misinformation Being Disbursed on Healthcare Reform
• Catastrophe by Dick Morris - Covers the Healthcare debacle

HR-3200 - full report

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

HR 3200 Kills the Private Insurance Industry

Obama's talk about his health care plan creating more competition is bunk. It will virtually make private health insurance illegal. If you are self employed like my husband and I are you will not be able to get private health insurance. You will be required to get on the public option. Take a look at this language in HR 3200 under section 102 with the Orwellian title Protecting the Choice to Keep Curent Coverage:

Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.

And then there's this:

Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.

So, the private insurance companies will have built in price controls on existing customers, yet they won't be able to bring in new customers after Y1 of the health care plan. How do the private insurance companies compete with the government run health care plan? They don't. This bill is designed to kill the private insurance industry and force people onto the government plan.

And if you get your health insurance through your employer, you're not off the hook either:

The Commissioner shall establish a grace period whereby, for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan under section 101, including the essential benefit package requirement under section 121.

In other words, if your employer offers health insurance, he has five years to make his plan identical to the public option. So what's the point of remaining with your probably more expensive employer's private health care plan? There isn't any, so once again, the government forces you onto its government run health care system and under its thumb.

Investor's Business Daily expounds further on this language in HR 3200:

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised -- with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."

If you don't like sound of this, then you need to get on the horn to your US representative and give him or her an earful.

On a related note, The Politico noticed what it is calling a gaffe that the president committed today, but this isn't a gaffe at all. It's a piece of the truth that managed to sneak out via Freudian slip:

Senator Jim DeMint remarked that Obama's health care reform plan will be his Waterloo if the GOP can successfully stop it, and based upon what's in HR 3200, you better hope the GOP and Blue Dogs are successful. The president responded today in a most ridiculous fashion:

He said this not about him, which we all know is untrue. Everything he does is all about him. He's the most narcissistic, arrogant, unreasonable, selfish, power- hungry president we've ever had. I called him our Veruca Salt president in an AIP column a few weeks back. I was right then and I'm right now. He will do anything to get his way. He will use every scare tactic, every strong arm tactic, and every blackmail tactic to get it passed and when he does, it will be as disastrous as every other program he's pushed through.

Michelle Malkin: 83 million would lose their private coverage.

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

‘I Was Lied To!’ Spector Town Hall Gets Heated – Watch Video

People are upset... They are not mobs, organized right radicals or crazies. They are concerned Americans who what their elected representatives to represented them and uphold the Constitution. The are young, old, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, Conservatives, parents, grand-parents, veterans and every day Americans.

At Obama's Town Halls they are keeping protestors and people with questions out and packing the audience with supporters (many paid) and shills.

And the Dems, like Nancy Pelosi, are making up crazy stuff about mobs carrying Swastikas while it is they who are running ads on Craig's list hiring disrupters to go to these meetings along with professional protestors from ACORN, SEIU, La Raza and the list goes on.

Watch and listen to these people for yourself...

Tempers flare at Specter health care town hall.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) was shouted down at a health care town hall meeting. The man accused Specter of having his pockets stuffed with money from lobbyists.
"One day God is going to stand before you and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damn cronies up on the Hill and then you will get your just deserts," the man said.

Sources: Real Clear Politics and Fox News

Posted: Daily Thought Pad

The Ultimate Resting Place of Socialized Medicine?

My wife and I disagree about some of the key end-of-life issues. When such morbid subjects arise, as they must and as they have with increasing frequency as the debate over medical care rages on, she remains adamant that she does not want to linger in pain, holding on to those final months, weeks, days or moments through any extraordinary medical intervention.

On the other hand, I want to live for every additional second modern medicine or Providence might permit. Dylan Thomas summed up my feelings in his most famous poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As President Barack Obama and Congress discuss health care legislation, and we citizens worry over the ramifications of possible policy outcomes, there arises the haunting specter of euthanasia. My wife and I may disagree on what end-of-life decision to make, but we agree that it should be our decision, not the government's.

A proposal to cover millions more Americans with medical insurance predicated on spending less on medical care in the process perplexes enough. But for those who care about freedom -- not having government tell you how to live -- and those who wish to live as long as they can -- by definition, not having the government tell you to hang it up and die -- there is even more to fear.

It's not that Obamacare is a one-step federal government takeover of medicine. But it does qualify as another giant step in that same frightening direction.

We've known for years that the more the government picks up the tab for our doctors, nurses, and drugs, the more the government will tell us how to live our lives. What to eat. What not to eat. What not to smoke or drink. What recreations not to engage in (too dangerous), and that we need to do more leg-lifts and jumping jacks with more gusto -- like a scene I recall from 1984.

Already cities have banned trans fat. The poor, who happen to smoke or drink alcohol in larger percentages than those more well off, are increasingly crushed under sin taxes. There's talk of hiking taxes on Dr. Pepper -- and candy.

We can hope that the power of police unions can keep donuts on the market at relatively low expense.

But expect much worse. And though the excuse for ever greater nannying will always be to protect the taxpayers (forced by politicians to pay the medical bills of everyone else), it will be government experts, not taxpayers, dictating dietary and exercise mandates to the population.

Still, the issue of euthanasia is even more frightening. Older people, as their bodies deteriorate, cost more money. Putting hospitals under increased government budgetary oversight and command will not miraculously increase government budgets for hospitals. Cutting costs will become a draconian theme, never ending . . . until death.

Even now, "death by waiting" is a common rationing procedure in Britain and Canada. If you are young and living under socialized medicine, getting dialysis from government-run hospitals is fairly easy; if you are old, wait. The system's limited medical facilities, doctors and nurses practice a kind of triage. The aged are the hopeless, in this common scenario, and give up their lives for the good of the hospital budget.

This is hardly an "easy death" or "good killing" ("euthanasia" comes from euthanos or “good death”). It is death by bureaucracy. Bureaucrats love their queues,need their queues. And the impetus is clear: Saving "the taxpayers" -- not the patients.

Former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm addressed this issue decades ago when he philosophized, "We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life."

Mr. Obama and the congressional architects of their new medical regime are promising to cut the overall cost of care. Are we really to believe there will be no pressure to deny expensive treatments in order to save money?

Many opponents of Obamacare are jumping on a provision in one version of this legislative work-in-progress, a directive to pay doctors to counsel the elderly -- and terminally ill patients -- on various end-of-life issues. In the New York Post, Betsy McCaughey said this mandate "invites abuse" and that "seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care."

A front-page Washington Post article, headlined "Talk Radio Campaign Frightening Seniors," reported that this controversy "undercuts what many say is the fundamental challenge of discussing sensitive costly societal questions about how to align patient wishes at the end of life with financial realities, for both the family and taxpayers."

Not getting a pacemaker at 75 years old may mean a person dies at 77 or 78, instead of at 83. What are five years of life worth? Who should decide? (And for many it means 10 ,15 or 20 additional years, and often productive years or years valued by their families.)

With the federal government in the medical care business through the so-called Public Plan, folks in Washington will have the power to decide.

If you don't like your health insurance company, you ain't seen nothing yet!

by Paul Jacob – Townhall - The ultimate resting place of socialized medicine?

Related Resources:

• Healthcare: Does Canada Do It Better?
• ObamaCare For Seniors: Sorry, You’re Just Not Worth It
• *Letter to Your Congress Person on Health Care (Obamacare) HR3200
• *A Look at What is Really in the Health Care Bill (HR 3200): Chilling!
• Useless Eaters
• Reparations By Way of Health Care Reform
• Kennedy: Let’s Ration Healthcare
• GovernmentCare’s Assault on Seniors
• Kristol: Kill It, And Start Over
• AARP Does Obama Townhall

Additional related information in Dick Morris’s Catastrophe

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power