Showing posts with label Healthcare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Healthcare. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Brown vs. Coakley Tweets o' the Day

• Coakley's hinting at voter fraud? Yeah, the big Massachusetts Republican Machine has the whole state wired.

• RT @benpolitico: Nobody's using the coat check at Coakley

• Observer in Mass says Scott Brown by a wide margin, the polls are swamped and the voters electric. Calls it an avalanche

• RT @BrentTeichman: **BREAKING** ACORN admits there are not enough Disney characters to put Coakley over the top.

• For those who are watching Martha Coakley 16% Scott Brown 66%

• does Coakley need drivers to pick up more bodies from morgue or just another batch from the asylum

• Time for #Coakley to take her place under the #Obama bus

• Give Axelrod heartburn... Vote Scott Brown.

• Was there a "FULL MOON" last night? It looks like all the #Obama Zombies R out today & twitting against Scott Brown Tea Party Massachusetts

• Coakley's only qualifications for the senate is the D at the end of her name and the Machine

• U.S. News & World Report: Scott Brown Fueled by Independents’ Anger at Liberal Arrogance http://ow.ly/YlzZ

• Scott Brown America Stands With U Today!

• Ace commenter makes a great point: if Brown wins by Obama's margin, will it be a "landslide"?

• Suggested line for a desperate Coakley campaign: "If Brown wins, MLK will have died for nothing."

• ABC Empathizes with White House: Coakley Loss ‘Shakespearean,’ ‘Tragedy of Greek Proportions’

• Wow. Martha Coakley has bought every piece of AdSense in my Reader. Lame.

• Gravediggers worked overtime last night to get out the vote for Coakley.

• Breaking News from MA...Coakley suffering from a horrible rash from ASTROTURF

• Scott Brown is a trending topic on twitter. Martha Coakley is not. Is that indicative of the outcome?

• Why is this woman handing out blank absentee ballots? http://bit.ly/91Ouot

• Best line of the day I heard: "Scott Brown win is Mary Jo's revenge" ?Go Scott Go Baby!?? <--Don't forget Martha Moxley

• How can any democrat tweet me in my face saying "Scott Brown is a joke." When they elected Al Franken.

• Since it pisses off teabagging turds: Remember, Mass voters: vote for Scott Brown like spitting on Ted Kennedy's grave

Actually, that last one might motivate a few conservatives to vote for Brown.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Glute-meter quivering: Andrew Sullivan predicts Brown landslide

Famed Atlantic columnist and ghost-blogging expert Andrew Sullivan says Democrats can stop hoping now.

I can see no alternative scenario but a huge - staggeringly huge - victory for the FNC/RNC machine tomorrow. They crafted a strategy of total oppositionism to anything Obama proposed a year ago.

Is oppositionism a word?

Mebbe one of the ghostwriters did it.

Remember they gave him zero votes on even the stimulus in his first weeks. They saw health insurance reform as Obama's Waterloo, and, thanks in part to the dithering Democrats, they beat him on that hill. They have successfully channeled all the rage at the massive debt and recession the president inherited on Obama after just one year.

Where does one learn to weave prose this masterful, this powerful, this sublime? I think my glutes just tensed, not that there's anything wrong with that.

If they can do that already, against the massive evidence against them, they have the power to wield populism to destroy any attempt by government to address any actual problems.

This is a nihilist moment, built from a nihilist strategy in order to regain power ... to do nothing but wage war against enemies at home and abroad.

Shhh... no one tell Andi about that living-and-breathing document called "The Constitution". Or that other anachronism "The Declaration of Independence". Andi believes in unlimited government, unlimited taxes and the superiority of central planning, Politburo-style. To hell with the free market, peons! Government always knows best!

What comes next will be a real test for Obama. I suspect serious health insurance reform is over for yet another generation... The uninsured will even probably vote Republican next time in protest at Obama's failure! That's how blind the rage is.

Ditto any attempt to grapple with climate change.

Is that what it's called now? I thought you used to call it "global warming"? Or is that only in the summer?

In fact, any legislative moves with this Democratic party and this Republican party are close to hopeless. The Democrats are a clapped out, gut-free lobbyist machine. The Republicans are insane. The system is therefore paralyzed beyond repair.

Hold on, I'm writing all of these brilliant insights down.

Memo to self: Andi doesn't believe that the Constitution is worth defending. Therefore conservatives are "insane".

Yes, I'm gloomy. Not because I was so wedded to this bill, although I think it's a decent enough start. But because if America cannot grapple with its deep and real problems after electing a new president with two majorities, then America's problems are too great for Americans to tackle.

And so one suspects that this is a profound moment in the now accelerating decline of this country. And one of the major parties is ecstatic about it.

Actually, we'll be ecstatic once we impeach every Democrat who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and then proceeded to spit on it.


Sunday, January 17, 2010

Obama: I don't know Scott Brown's record, but I'll attack it anyway -- Unnamed 'White House advisers' throw Coakley under bus

This afternoon, President Obama visited Massachusetts in a last-ditch effort to save Martha Coakley's disastrous campaign for . Doesn't he look ecstatic to be there?

"He's drivin' his truck around the Commonwealth... I don't know him, he may be a perfectly nice guy... I don't know whether he's been fighting for you up until now..."

Oops. Since Scott Brown is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army National Guard, it should be quite apparent he's been fighting for them.

The Times of London puts it plainly, headlining today's article on the race "Voters desert President Barack Obama in Ted Kennedy seat":

“People who I never in a million years thought would have voted Republican are going to him,” said Rhonda Serre, a mother of two who has lost her job but still supports the Democrats. On Friday Brown was joined by Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. “This election will send a signal and a very dramatic one,” Giuliani said. “Believe me, the Democrats are frightened.”

Most analysts still believe the Democrats can win. But even a narrow defeat will be portrayed as a victory by the Republicans. Brown’s Senate campaign is already being studied by party strategists as a model. “He’s making healthcare a front-and-centre issue in the most liberal state in the country and it’s working for him,” said Whit Ayres, co-founder of Resurgent Republic, a group of conservative strategists.

“It’s the albatross around the Democrats’ necks.”

Obama advisers are quietly spreading word that Coakley's campaign is doomed.

Multiple advisers to President Obama have privately told party officials that they believe Democrat Martha Coakley is going to lose Tuesday’s special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy for more than 40 years, several Democratic sources told CNN Sunday.

The sources added that the advisers are still hopeful that Obama's visit to Massachusetts on Sunday - coupled with a late push by Democratic activists - could help Coakley pull out a narrow victory in an increasingly tight race against Republican state Sen. Scott Brown.

However, the presidential advisers have grown increasingly pessimistic in the last three days about Coakley's chances after a series of missteps by the candidate, sources said.

InTrade now has Brown trading at 65, a five-point lift over the last 90 minutes alone.


Update via Twitter: "Overheard in Coakley camp 'I wanted Whitey Bulger not Obama to stop by'". Heh.

Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!


Reversal of Fortune: InTrade has Brown over Coakley 60 - 40

Reports from the Scott Brown rally in Worcester were 'electric' while the last-ditch Obama-Coakley event was anything but. The President and the soon-to-be-failed Democrat candidate for The Kennedy Seatcouldn't even fill a 3,500 seat venue; and their carefully screened crowd was moribund -- and even included a few hecklers.

InTrade has the momentum shifting dramatically to the GOP candidate, a 10-point shift since yesterday.

And if Brown wins, interim Senator Paul Kirk is immediately terminated and can not cast the 60th vote for MarxCare™.


Update at 21:18 ET: Brown is now trading at 65.

Vanishing Doctors: What do doctors think about government control of health care?

Read what doctors really think about Obamacare and pass the URL to any docs you know.

The URL is http://VanishingDoctors.com.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Holy Crap! InTrade has Coakley in dead heat with Scott Brown

InTrade, possibly the most accurate political prediction market in the U.S., now shows the Scott Brown vs. Martha Coakley special election as a dead heat. Less than 48 hours ago, Coakley was trading 77 to 23 over Brown.

Each candidate trades at 50.0, a stunning reversal for Coakley who once traded at 96. Shares in Brown have risen from 5 in a matter of less than a week.

InTrade's accuracy is well regarded. That the race is now even money speaks volumes for the reversal of fortune.


Linked by: Hot Air, Patterico's Pontifications, The Strata Sphere and Wizbang. Thanks!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Obamacare: the official tax form

Official U.S. Federal Health Choices Board Document G4R7-B11T-Z001
Published by the Agency for Effective Treatment Analysis, the Policy Bureau for Diversity in Health Care and the Office of Health Agency Personnel Management.
Copyright © 2010, All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction without express written permission prohibited.


DO follow these simple rules in calculating your tax liability:

Are you a member of a union? If yes, deduct $4,500 from your tax balance on Line 19. If no, add $4,500 to your balance on Line 19.

Are you a legal resident of Nebraska? If yes, place a zero by your estimated Medicare tax liability on Line 48(b). If no, add $3,000 to Line 48(b).

Are you a member of a federally appointed Community Health Organizing Organization (CHOO)? If yes, place a zero by your estimated federal tax total on Line 63.

Are you a member of the trial bar specializing in malpractice lawsuits? If yes, place a zero by your estimated federal tax total on Line 63.

Are you a member of a Designated Indigent Minority (see Appendix D for complete list including African-American, Buddhist-American, Franco-American, Somali-American, Yemeni-American, Nordic-American or simply an illegal alien)? If yes, check the box on line 192 to receive a Diversity Reparations Credit of $5,000.00.

---Please continue on page 84---

Obamacare: thousands of pages of backroom, partisan deals; I can't wait to see how they decide who actually gets treatment.


Friday, January 08, 2010

RED ALERT: WaPo Op-Ed Columnist Paid to Promote ObamaCare

On 28 December 2009, The Washington Post published a staunch defense of government-run health care written by an MIT economics professor named Jonathan Gruber. The gist of Gruber's op-ed: the tax on 'Cadillac' health care plan isn't really a tax -- it's simply "a plan to finance real health reform":

...The Senate assessment on high-cost insurance plans doesn't walk like a tax or talk like a tax -- because it is not a tax. It is an innovative way of financing the health reform we so desperately need.

What the WaPo failed to disclose is that Gruber was awarded a 'sole source' contract by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contract is called "Technical Assistance in Evaluating Options for National Healthcare Reform", which would explain Gruber's strenuous language.

Today Ben Smith of Politico engaged Gruber in the following Q&A:

"[D]on’t you think it’s rather, um, dubious that the guy evaluating the heath care reform–for $300,000–is also the package’s single biggest champion? And no one has been transparent about this contract?"...

...at no time have I publicly advocated a position that I did not firmly believe - indeed, I have been completely consistent with my academic track record... Every position I have advocated on this topic is completely consistent with these reports.

In short, Gruber was battling critics of Obamacare in friendly media outlets like The Washington Post without any disclosure of his conflicts-of-interest.

...while he was being paid to provide his services to HHS, he was also fending off health care reform critics in the media. Gruber was one of the prominent analysts to rebut an insurance industry report from PricewaterhouseCoopers in October saying premiums would shoot up if a health care bill passes. And he has recently written columns defending specific provisions in the House and Senate bills, particularly the "Cadillac tax" on high-cost insurance plans...

But a column in The Washington Post on the Cadillac tax just a few days later did not disclose his relationship with the administration. Gruber was listed merely as a "professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

Government documents explaining the terms of his contract say that he was "uniquely positioned" for providing analysis for the health department's assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, describing him as a "recognized expert in health policy in economics."

That's what we call an infomercial, kids.

These are the depths to which "mainstream newspapers" like WaPo have been reduced.

While you're reading, can I interest you in some ShamWow™?


By their own calculations, Democrats risking 25 million American lives

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Lame Duck) and President Barack Obama like to claim that 14,000 U.S. citizens lose their health care insurance each and every day.

On a rare Saturday session of the Senate in November of 2009, Senator Judd Gregg (R-NV) called out the fraud inherent to the Democrat health care bill.

[Democrats] continue to claim this bill costs about $800 billion... [but] that is a totally dishonest number... The way that number was arrived at was that they don’t start spending money on this bill until the fourth or the fifth year. They couldn’t get the score they wanted from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), so they changed the starting point. They moved back another year in the ten-year cycle. They went from four years to five years as to the starting point of most of the spending in this bill...

What they don’t tell the American people is they’re not spending anything in the first four or five years of the bill... They do cut Medicare throughout the ten-year period. But they don’t spend the money. They don’t start the spending programs until the year 2014, when this bill is fully phased in, when all these new programs, these massive expansion of entitlements are created, these brand-new entitlements. When all this new spending occurs, this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.

Bernard Madoff would be proud.

The question any rational person would ask is this: if health care reform is so urgent that 14,000 people a day are risking death for lack of health insurance, why would Democrats wait five years to begin the program, thereby putting 25 million Americans at risk?

Oh -- I can answer that question. Because they lie. Incessantly, continually and habitually. They lie about everyone and everything. Because if they told the truth, they could no more win public office than Michael Moore could endorse SlimFast.

 

Maybe I'll watch the State of the Union address on C-SPAN

Candidate Barack Obama promised complete transparency into the health care debates at least eight times and made it a centerpiece of his campaign. In recent days, C-SPAN management vocally endorsed the concept of televised negotiations... to no avail.

"The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety," Lamb wrote. "We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool."

Lamb reminded the leaders that "President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American."

Specifically, then-Sen. Obama said on the campaign trail that "we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies."

In reality, a mini-Politburo consisting of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Rahm Emanuel are redesigning one-sixth of the United States economy in secret and behind locked doors.

Given Barack Obama's egregious lies during the campaign, I'd encourage you to forego the State of the Union address. Or, if determined to watch it, just remember that every statement he utters possesses all the accuracy of his C-SPAN promises.

A live polygraph feed during the State of the Union would be entertaining indeed.

 

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Welcome to CaliCare

Due to its lax immigration policies and easy access to welfare -- factors that indisputably increase crime rates -- California now spends more on its prisons than on the entire ten campus University of California system.

In 2001, California spent $680 million on medical services for its prisoners.

In 2004, California spent in excess of $1 billion for prisoners' health care services.

Last year, California spent $3 billion on health care for its prisoners.

In other words, over the last eight years, health care costs for California's single-payer prison system have more than quadrupled.

Yet in a June speech, President Obama justified a government takeover of the entire health care system with an observation on rising costs. He stated, "...more and more Americans are forced to worry about not just getting well, but whether they can afford to get well. Millions more wonder if they can afford the routine care necessary to stay well. Even for those who have health insurance, rising premiums are straining family budgets to the breaking point—premiums that have doubled over the last nine years..."

Compare and contrast: over the last eight years, costs for California's single-payer prison health care system -- controlled by Democrats for decades and heavily laced with unions at every level of government -- have increased more than four times.

The costs of premiums for the private health care system -- with all of its innovation and access to the latest drugs, diagnostic tests, advanced equipment and research, have only doubled in nine years.

Government can't possibly run things better than the free market. And California's prison health care system is just a microcosm of what we can expect.

And something else for seniors to consider: the costs for their care will compete with the health care costs of the federal prison system. And, if California is any indication, the prisoners' medical will come before seniors. There's only so much of taxpayers' money to go around.

Welcome to CaliCare. It's the Democrat Utopia of California translated to the entire freaking United States.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Obama on ObamaCare: 'I was against it before I was for it'

Dan from New York:

At the time, it looked mighty sweet and refreshing, so America drank the Kool-Aid in '08. We need to drink the antidote in '10, or it's gonna kill us.

Hang on to this clip and put it in a safe place where you can find it next year. I remember how hard it was to locate that old footage of Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo setting the table for the last Democratic debacle they blamed Republicans for - the great financial meltdown of 2008.

Related


Is that a Hockey Stick in your graph, or you just happy to see me?

Legacy media has relentlessly marketed the incipient recovery, the end of the recession and the successful culmination of Democrat austerity measures. That last part was a joke. No better evidence of these campaigns are today's headlines highlighting "stable" housing prices:

WaPo: ...U.S. home prices were unchanged in October, according to the widely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller indexes released on Tuesday, indicating stabilization in the hard-hit housing sector...

LAT: "On a month-to-month bases, we are certainly slowing down in terms of the numbers we had seen previously," said Michael D. Larson, a housing analyst with Weiss Research. But "the story remains the same: Housing is not in some huge epic rebound, but nor is it falling apart anymore -- stabilization is clear."

Of course, it takes a special kind of journalistic prowess to omit and ignore the real story of the day.

Fannie Mae: Delinquencies Increase Sharply in October

Fannie Mae reported today that the rate of serious delinquencies - at least 90 days behind - for conventional loans in its single-family guarantee business increased to 4.98% in October, up from 4.72% in September - and up from 1.89% in October 2008.


Now that right there is whatcha call a real hockey stick.
...Just more evidence of the growing delinquency problem, although it is important to note these stats do include Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) loans in trial modifications (and the trial modification periods have been extended again).

What this really means is that the various central-planning efforts of the big government Democrats -- from Fannie Mae, to the FHA, to HAMP -- represent a stunning series of increasingly costly failures that our children and grandchildren will have to somehow pay off. With interest.

As for analysis, you need not wait for legacy media to catch up. In short, the biggest predictor of mortgage defaults is negative equity. The more underwater you are on your loan, the better chance you have of walking away from the home. The fact that more loans (even in HAMP) are going late indicates a deflationary housing spiral is still underway. Foreclosures hurt home values; lower valuations lead to more folks underwater; which leads to more foreclosures... ad infinitum.

And despite all of these many and varied failures, legacy media looks askance while helping to sell the same big government, Politburo-style plans to nationalize one-sixth of the economy. I can't wait for the Harvard Case Study on the death of the liberal media. At this rate, it could be ready by the fall semester of 2011.


Thursday, December 24, 2009

Free, Downloadable Pocket Guide to Democrat Statements on Health Care Reform During Christmas Recess




A Merry Christmas for Congress from Victor the Contractor

By Victor the Contractor

The United States Senate will have a very Merry Christmas this year as it gifts itself around eighteen percent of the economy. The Health Care Reform Act will effectively nationalize a sixth of the economy while offering fines and imprisonment for violators.

No one really understands what the bill in its entirety means because every time an item is revealed it creates a firestorm of controversy and resistance by one faction or another. Suffice to say this unconstitutional exercise will create a cabal of governmental institutions designed to take a fledgling medical bureaucracy and metastasize in into a 'Health Care Command and Control Administration' that progressively plans larger and larger parts of the economy.

It is not that far-reaching to imagine the FDA controlling and regulating food as drugs because consumption -- or lack thereof -- has some demonstrable effect on health. Certain foods and drink will invariably be banned as poisonous and anything seen as 'not green enough' will be rationed. The cross enforcement of anti-pollution laws and green technologies will bring the EPA to the party as an enforcement arm tailored to regulating all manner of pollution producers. Think of banning riding mowers as creating pollution and a sedentary lifestyle, thus running afoul of the 'Green AND Obesity Police.' Want to smoke a cigar with your goombahs at the local pizzeria? Fuggedaboudit!

Pizza will, of course, be banned or regulated as a major cause of obesity. Those ovens that pump out CO2 by the cubic yard have got to go, too. And cigars? Not only do they cause cancer, global warming and spew aroma pollutants, but the second hand smoke is a weapon used to assault other peoples' health. Now fur-wearing can be rightfully banned as the glorification of sport hunting among otherwise 'civilized' people. The practical implications of amassing policy-making power in one central administration is almost endless as more and more regulatory commissions join forces for the synergies each affords.

While my examples could be viewed as farcical there are many who are chomping at the bit to do away with the pastimes I have noted and this legislation is a backdoor method for doing so. I can for see a world where citizen behavior will be controlled, "To provide for the general welfare." Hell, if Congress can push Health Care through, then a Cap-and-Trade bill is small change and "Card Check" should be passed almost unnoticed. Nobody mention a $20 minimum wage, please...

Of course the American people are screaming at their televisions every night and swamping their respective legislators with opposition but the Government seems to be on a Communist autopilot of late. Our democratic form of Government is morphing into a Politburo with a Central Planning Committee right before our very eyes. And and all the press can do is applaud Michelle Obama's choice of evening-wear and those 'cute as a button' daughters who don't know which fork to use with salad but eat with their hands so gracefully.

I'm so sick of watching the mainstream media dally on about 'The New Kennedy Family' while our Constitution succumbs to the 'Second Bill of Rights,' first proposed by FDR and is in the process of being made into law as we speak. Its a blessing that the founders of this great nation did not linger long enough to see this sad turn of events.

It is also troubling and a sign of the times that Americans don't know what is 'Constitutional' and what is not. That politicians can appear in the media and even suggest that 'health care is a human right' is an affront to all who know The Bill of Rights. And for anyone to claim compassion on the poor is doomed to be poor someday. For we are spending our childrens' prosperity so that one party may be re-elected by the masses for whom they have purchased new welfare programs.

The next generation will be in the unenviable position of saying 'No' to the entitlements as the Treasury is depleted and China loses its taste for American bonds and the avarice which accompanies it. The rich will always have health care and the average American citizen will have dirty clinics with alcoholic 'pseudo-docs' to provide substandard services. Ask anyone who's actually had to go to a clinic: They'll tell you horror stories.

Yes, boys and girls, there is a Santa. And he has given himself the best Christmas present ever. Control. 'Santa Congress' has engineered a plan to nationalize the entire economy and the first step is the health care industry. They did a dry-run with the finance industry and a few car companies, and seeing little protest from its citizens, the government has upped the ante. The Senate voted for cloture on Christmas Eve. Such irony is not lost on me as the Government has finally grasped the spirit of Christmas! But woe to all that this is a selfish spirit; filled with avarice, self-dealing and hypocrisy. Congress will rue the day that it opted to declare a dictator in President Obama, even as it denies the fact.

For even with a change in leadership in both Houses next November, the fix is in. The infrastructure will be in place for a 'Democratic Dictatorship' and the new members will yield to the temptation of pork for prurience. Elections have less and less impact as Democrats are increasingly corrupt and Republicans apologetic for having just a hint of morality.

If I hear about shivers running up a leg at the mention of someone's name again my head will rend the tattered duct tape that hold its contents in and I'll have to wipe my laptop down once more. For the press is now the gossipy sophomore at the high school dance; spreading rumors about what she just heard, as if it was fact, while not understanding the full impact of her words. And woe unto all of those who mistakenly believe that there is any dignity in forcing the productive to support the lazy, or unlucky. That just creates more lazy and unlucky people.

I wonder if the people in Rome started investing in villas in the countryside with high walls towards the end of the empire. Or maybe just a few got out before the treasury was empty and the hoards invaded for the crumbs. There have been ten great empires the earth has been graced with or has suffered, depending on your outlook. And they all started crumbling from within when more people sat and held their hands out while fewer people got up at three AM to make the donuts. Just saying...

Have a Holy Christmas and Happy new Year,

Victor The Contractor


Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Transcript: Calling the DemCare Emergency Help Line

Welcome to the National Health Care Emergency Help Line!

For Espanol, press 1.
For Urdu, press 2
For Arabic, press 3
For Farsi, press 4
For Hmong, press 5
For all other languages, press 6

6

Thank you! Did you press 6? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2.

1

Thank you. To speed processing of your call, please key in your 9-digit social security number, whether it was illegally obtained or not.

5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 3

Thank you. Did you enter five five five four four three three three three? If yes, press 7, if no, press 3.

7

Thank you. Please enter the nature of your ailment, condition or problem.

For Achondroplasia, press 1-0-0-0. For Acne, press 1-0-0-1. For Acrodysostosis, press 1-0-0-2. For Acromegaly, press 1-0-0-3. For Adenoids, press 1-0-0-4. For Adrenoleukodystrophy, press 1-0-0-5. For Age-related macular degeneration, press 1-0-0-6. For Agoraphobia, press 1-0-0-7. For Albinism, press 1-0-0-8. For AIDS, press 1-0-0-8. For Alcohol poisoning, press 1-0-0-9. For Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency, press 1-0-1-0. For Alport syndrome, press 1-0-1-1. For Altitude sickness, press 1-0-1-2. For Alzheimer's disease, press 1-0-1-3. For Amyloidosis, press 1-0-1-4. For Anaemia, press 1-0-1-5. For --

*

Thank you. To enter the nature of your ailment, condition or problem by name, use the touch-tone keypad to spell the name, then press the pound sign.

4 (h) ... 3 (e) ... 2 (a) ... 7 (r) ... 8 (t) ... 2 (a) ... 8 (t) ... 8 (t) ... 2 (a) ... 2 (c) ... 5 (k) ... #

Did you select HEART ATTACK? If yes, press 2, if no, press 9.

2

On a scale of 1 to 9, with 9 being excruciating pain, how much pain are you in?

9

Enter your age, followed by the pound sign.

7 4 #

I'm sorry, the maximum age of treatment for this condition, as determined by Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research is Seventy-three. Thank you for calling.

Good-bye.

7 2 # ... 7 2 # ... 72 #

*** Click ***

[Call recording terminated]


Sunday, December 20, 2009

'Health care for all' is not a right; it is slavery

For Americans, the Declaration of Independence codifies man's unalienable, individual rights.

These rights are life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. And that is the complete list of rights to which citizens are entitled.

There is no right to a Whopper with Cheese at the local Burger King; no right to a free month of rent at the Lakeview Luxury Apartments; or even free Chemotherapy treatments should you need them.

Why did the Declaration limit our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness? Because legitimate rights provide freedom for citizens to act, not to receive free shelter, food, medical treatment or big-screen televisions.

The American system guarantees you the right to work for what you want -- not for goods or services to be 'given' to you, without effort on your part, by some mysterious "others".

Consider a system in which your neighbors are compelled to feed, clothe and house you. In other words, your neighbors are ordered, whether they like it or not, to give up their freedoms (their private property, their liberty) to pay for your existence.

In such a system, you would be granted the rights to the goods or services produced by others, whether they voluntarily agree to such a system or not.

In such a system, the right to the pursuit of happiness is misconstrued to mean something else entirely: the right for other people to please you, whether they want to do so or not. Your "right" to happiness comes at the expense of others. They lose their liberties because they have now become your slaves. They are compelled to try to make you happy at their own expense and have no choice in the matter.

But our system defines rights in the form of freedom to act, not guarantees that citizens will receive free goods or services. It was this freedom to act that was unique among nations and made the United States the envy of the world, the richest and most powerful country ever seen on the face of the Earth. It did so by defining individual rights only as freedom of action.

With the passage of Democrat health care, however, the individual rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence have been trampled upon. It is as if the Declaration had never been written as politicians invent new "rights" from whole cloth. These "rights" require only your mere existence: by existing, you will be granted gift-wrapped goods and services from "others" who somehow will provide them to you.

You are now entitled to something simply because it exists and you want or need it. You are entitled to receive it from the government, because the government will take as much labor, as much private property, as much as it needs from the citizenry to give it to you.

Of course, Democrat health care truly wipes away our rights. The people who manufacture the goods or provide the services are now beholden to the state. If you attempt to make the delivery of any good or service a right, you thereby enslave the providers.

But doctors, as Ayn Rand wrote, are not servants of their patients. They are "traders, like everyone else in a free society, and they should bear that title proudly, considering the crucial importance of the services they offer."

The Democrat Party's assertion that "health care for all" is a right is a notion at complete odds with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is no more a right than the right to free bread, free orange juice at the grocery store, a free condo or free open bowling on Friday nights.

"Health care for all" translates to slavery, plain and simple, and marks the beginning of the end of the American experiment.


Inspired by: Dr. Leonard Peikoff and Dr. Mark Levin.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Top Nine Health Care Charts You've Never Seen Before

Trial lawyers are the second biggest donor to the Democrats' Political Action Committee, trailing only the union bosses of the IBEW.

The "lawsuit industry" gives more money (roughly $127 million in 2008) to Congress than every sector of the health care industry, combined.

Medical malpractice costs continue to skyrocket to new historical highs, growing far faster than any other component of health insurance premiums.

Which makes the percentage of your health premium going to pay for the trial lawyers' mansions roughly 75%.

And trial lawyers bring in more money than either Microsoft or Pfizer.





Tort reform is an easy way to reduce health care costs without destroying the entire system.

But Harry Reid -- in his current mentally-incapacitated state -- won't have any of it. He requires money and power. And the trial lawyers continue to provide him with both.


Update: ReidCare Throws a Bone to Tort Lawyers Too.

Charts: Source.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

The Delusions (and Barbarism) of the 'Reality-Based' Community

Over at 538.com, Nate Silver devotes significant attention to the faux liberal outrage erupting over the nationalization of health care. Silver analyzes the responses to 20 of his questions posed to Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) and Jon Walker (FireDogLake).

I'll save you the effort of reading their neural diarrhea. Suffice it to say that the "Reality-based" Community devotes thousands of words to government-run health care without mentioning:

• The "dangerous" amount of national debt that we are assuming ($50,000 for each and every American by 2019 without a health care takeover);

• The exploding and extremely risky deficit;

• The impending bankruptcy of Medicare and Medicaid (the time-bomb is set to explode in less than a decade);

• Slashing $500 billion from Medicare while claiming to "improve quality";

• And the utter accounting fraud associated with booking six years of benefits against ten years of tax revenues.

Bernie Madoff is serving time for running a Ponzi scheme like this, only a 100 times smaller. Best of all, Silver is the supposed "numbers guy" for the socialist left. So he turns out to be just as intellectually honest as the rest of the Soros-funded troupe.

The numbers are real. And they are dangerous to the future of this country, according not to me, but the Congressional Budget Office.

So the "Reality-based" Community is either delusional or intent on the utter destruction of the American experiment. Choosing which is an exercise best left to the reader.


Note: Yes, this is the same Nate Silver of the Dealergate beclownment. No one tell Natey that a variety of lawsuits by dealers alleging partisan activities by the Obama administration are still wending their way through courts.