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

Thursday, March 25, 2010

So, Social Democrat Dimwits: if Health Care's a Right, What's Your Service-Level Agreement (SLA)?

Leftists and their beanie-brained supporters like to proclaim that health care is a right.

Never mind that health care is just a set of economic services and products, controlled by a complex web of voluntary human interactions. Just ignore the fact that the founders would have dismissed the idea that any such interaction could be a "right". And don't even consider that -- to grant someone a right like health care -- you will have to force someone else to provide that service, whether they want to or not.

Those bullet points are far too complicated for your average Social Democrat to contemplate (note to liberals: "contemplate" means "think about").

So the question you've got to ask these mental midgets is a follow-up: if health care's a right, what's the service level agreement (or "SLA") offered by ObamaCare?

A service level agreement... is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service) or performance... The SLA records a common understanding about services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees, and warranties. Each area of service scope should have the "level of service" defined. The SLA may specify the levels of availability, serviceability, performance, operation, or other attributes of the service.

If I want my guaranteed health care, how quickly will I receive it? What good is it if I don't know what my SLA is?

What services are covered? Face-lifts? Gastric bypasses? Tummy tucks?

What drugs are provided? What quality of care am I guaranteed? What kind of specialists will I get to see -- and how long will it take to get a referral?

The thousands of pages of DemCare create a hundred new offices, agencies and bureaucracies, but omit any mention of SLAs. Democrats don't want you to think about waiting in lines, the poor quality of care, or the disastrous policy decisions by bureaucrats in Washington, even though those will be the inevitable results of their doomed central planning efforts.

So I encourage you to call your Democrat representative and demand to know why you can't get immediate, free health care. It's your right, dammit! Your Constitutional right!


The cold, hard proof that Congressional Democrats despise Obamacare

1. THEY EXEMPTED THEMSELVES    You read that right. ObamaCare is so wonderful, so Utopian, so amazing, that Democrats in Congress exempted themselves, their families, their staff members and the President's clan from having to wait in line under socialized medicine.

2. THE 'BENEFITS' OF DEMCARE DON'T START UNTIL 2014    To postpone the wonderfulness until after the 2012 presidential election, Democrats purposefully delayed health care spending until 2013 and 2014. Every day, Democrats told us, 35,000 people lost their health insurance (primarily because they lost their jobs under the Obamaconomy, but I digress). So these people remain screwed.

And you know those sickly child props the Democrats rolled onstage like a Jerry Lewis telethon to pitch DemCare?

Sorry, kids. You've got as much of a chance of getting covered under DemCare as Michael Moore has of getting his own Jenny Craig commercial.

But, Melvin, it's so historic.


Hat tip: Mark Simone, 3/24/2010

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Knowing what we know now, will President Obama resurrect the need for a 'Civilian National Security Force' if Democrats retain power in November?

A week ago, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) pointed out that rating agencies were growing increasingly concerned with the United States' fiscal outlook.

More dismal news regarding our country’s fiscal standing was released yesterday by Moody’s Investors Service... ...the cost of servicing our debt is raising, therefore the United States has been brought "substantially" closer to losing our AAA, or highest level, credit rating.

"Under the ratings company’s so-called baseline scenario, the U.S. will spend more on debt service as a percentage of revenue this year than any other top-rated country except the U.K., and will be the biggest spender from 2011 to 2013."

...Before the State of the Union address, President Obama called for a freeze in discretionary spending. However, the budget for fiscal year 2011 he sent to Congress days later forecasts a record-breaking deficit of $1.6 trillion. Congress also recently voted to raise our country’s debt limit by $1.9 trillion to an astounding $14 trillion. These examples do not speak to fiscal restraint.

Despite these warnings, the irresponsible leaders of the Democrat Party ignored the will of the people yesterday and nationalized the health care system. Bachmann notes that the federal government now owns or controls about half of the entire U.S. economy

[They have] taken over Freddie, Fannie, Chrysler, GM, banks, AIG, student loans ... with this 18 percent [the health care system], that brings it up to 48 percent [of the private economy] that the federal government owns or controls. ... And they are not done.

No, they are not.

As oil prices inevitably rise -- thanks to the no-drill, no-refine policies of the Democrat Party -- the bureaucrats in Washington will ram through carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, "smart grids" and other "green" scams to confiscate more and more of your private property. As a result, they will control the production, delivery and use of all energy in the U.S.

Unpopular? Certainly. That's why Democrats -- and useful idiots like Lindsey "Goober" Graham -- will soon offer bills aimed at "comprehensive immigration reform".

That catch-phrase simply means that our borders will remain unsecured; our new, redistributive health, welfare and social services programs will incent new waves of illegal immigration; and Democrats will get the desired result: millions of new voters. And none of these illegals will have learned about or bought into our culture, our Constitution, our way of life, our language or anything else that contributes to a cohesive environment.

Not to be outdone, other liberals are working to restore the vote to the criminal population, another desirable Democrat demographic.

Near as I can figure it, the Democrat Party is actively working to destroy the American civil society. It appears to serve the interests of only the union bosses, the trial lawyers, government bureaucrats, illegal immigrants and felons. In other words, Democrats.

And, in the context of recent events, is it worth reconsidering the President's bizarre remarks last year regarding internal national security?

America must balance and integrate all elements of our national power. We can not continue to push the burden onto our military alone, or leave dormant any aspect of the arsenal of American capability. That's why my administration is committed to renewing diplomacy as a tool of American power and developing our civilian national security capabilities.

This was not the first time Obama expressed a desire for a powerful internal national security force. As a candidate in July 2008, Obama first enunciated the need.

In Barack Obama’s July 2, 2008 speech calling America to national service, Obama proposed “a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as our military... This has prompted some in the blogosphere to raise the specter of a huge new domestic paramilitary organization. Others suggest that he may have been talking about our “current non-military security agencies...

He said: "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

With the takeover of the health care sector, as Bachmann points out, Barack Obama has nationalized nearly half of the entire U.S. economy. Fourteen months ago, who would have thought such a thing possible?

And, if Democrats would retain control of Congress in November, is there any doubt that talk of an immediate need for a "Civilian National Security Force" would resurface?

Say, just to "preserve order" after the Acorn-types employed their usual tactics and flooded the system with absentee ballots.

To preserve this Republic, we are counting on you to marshal your neighbors, your friends and your families to help defeat the evil that the modern Democrat Party has become.

For, as Thomas Sowell has observed, November 2010 may well be "the point of no return."


Healthcare Haiku o' the Day

If you have a Right

To the service I provide,

I must be a Slave.

-- Haiku Guy on March 24, 2010


State-Run Health Care, by the Numbers

0: The number of televised negotiations regarding health care, promised by candidate Obama on August 21, 2008: "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."

13: The number of teeth that British veteran Ian Boynton pulled out himself with pliers "because he couldn't find an NHS (National Health Service) dentist... [he] could not afford to go private for treatment so instead took the drastic action to remove 13 of his teeth that were giving him severe pain."

14: The percentage of all patients in Britain who wait more than one (1) year to receive treatment after a referral by a general practitioner. Half of all National Health Care patients in Britain wait between 18 and 52 weeks for treatment.

37: The "health care ranking" assigned to the U.S. by the World Health Organization among the world's countries. This oft-quoted number is used to justify an overhaul of the U.S. health care system and lists countries like Italy (2), Andorra (4), Malta (5), Singapore (6), Oman (8), Portugal (12), Greece (14), the United Kingdom (18), Ireland (19), Columbia (22), Cyprus (24), Saudi Arabia (26), the UAE (27), Morocco (29), Canada (30), Chile (33), the Dominican Republic (35) and Costa Rica (36) ahead of the U.S. Considering that no U.S. citizens travel to these countries when experiencing a life-threatening situation, it's worth questioning the methods by which the WHO arrived at these rankings. Their criteria included subjective and political assessments such as "Fairness in financial contribution". Suffice it to say that the WHO's rankings are clearly fraudulent and are designed to influence U.S. policy.

60: Average cancer survival rate (all types) for patients in the United States. Canada's survival rate is significantly lower at 55%, while Europe's is a dismal 48%.

81: Average percentage of those who survive a diagnosis of prostate cancer in the United States versus 43% in Britain under their National Health Service.

90: Number of days, on average, each Canadian patient must wait for an MRI under the Canadian government-run health care system.

750: The estimated number of people waiting in line (in the pouring rain) at Britain's Bury Office attempting to register for dental care.

2050: By this year, "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (health care for the poor) will consume nearly the entire federal budget." And by 2082, Medicare spending alone will consume the entire federal budget. This trajectory is, quite obviously, unsustainable for our children and our grandchildren. Congress is bequeathing our descendents a bankrupt health care system -- for just the third of the medical system that the government already runs!

10,000: Number of Canadian breast cancer patients to file a class action lawsuit against Quebec's hospitals because, on average, they were forced to wait 60 days to begin post-operative radiation treatments.

280,392: The number of jobs that employers would shed if government levied an employer mandate, requiring them to insure all employees. A 2007 study by Katherine Baicker of Harvard University and Helen Levy of the University of Michigan ("Employer Health Insurance Mandates and the Risk of Unemployment") found that "0.2 percent of all full-time workers and 1.4 percent of uninsured full-time workers would lose their jobs if a health insurance mandate were written into law. Workers who would lose their jobs are disproportionately likely to be high school dropouts, minority, and female."

443,849: The number of British patients of the National Healthcare Service (NHS) who waited four or more weeks for inpatient admittance into a hospital (Excel file) in May of 2009 (more than 75% of all patients).

1,500,000: The number of Canadians who do not have -- and cannot find -- a general practitioner/primary care physician due to shortages in medical staff: "In Norwood, Ontario, 20/20 videotaped a town clerk pulling the names of the lucky winners out of a lottery box. The losers must wait to see a doctor... Shirley Healy, like many sick Canadians, came to America for surgery. Her doctor in British Columbia told her she had only a few weeks to live because a blocked artery kept her from digesting food. Yet Canadian officials called her surgery 'elective.' ...'The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live,' she said."

12,000,000: number of illegal immigrants who would qualify for free health care and -- in all likelihood -- additional health care rights for relatives under the Democrats' universal health care plan, according to a reported statement by the office of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and spokespeople for the racial separatist group La Raza.

$311,000,000 ($311 million): The amount of additional funding requested last month by the Obama administration simply to combat Medicare fraud. Medicare fraud is estimated at $60 billion annually.

$3,600,000,000 ($3.6 billion): The amount of added malpractice insurance costs to the current health care system instigated by an out-of-control trial lawyer lobby that donates heavily to Democrat causes.

$10,000,000,000 ($10 billion): The estimated amount of Medicaid fraud, based upon FBI estimates. Criminal practices include billing for nonexistent, overstated, or unnecessary services, kickbacks to patients, inflated costs, etc.

$60,000,000,000 ($60 billion): The estimated annual amount of Medicare fraud, due to widespread criminal operations that victimize taxpayers and specialize in dead doctors, fake patients, non-existent treatments and the like.

$107,000,000,000,000 ($107 trillion): The estimated shortfall of the Medicare and Social Security programs, which are utterly and completely bankrupt; they can be legitimately called an "enormous version of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme".

Canada and England don't pay as high a price for their health care because they freeload on American innovation. If we utilized their systems, Americans might worry less about paying for health care, but we'd get 2009-level care and long lines. Those are the immutable laws of supply and demand. Government monopolies don't innovate. Only the free market innovates.

Furthermore, government bureaucrats already raped the Social Security Trust Fund -- there is no trust fund. They raped the Medicare Trust Fund -- there's nothing left. They raped the Highway Trust Fund -- it's empty. I could go down a long list of things the government said it would do, but hasn't done. Because the big government statists are liars. They even moved these massive expenditures "off the books" to conceal the damage they've done.

And now the Democrat Party, the union bosses and the trial lawyers are launching the most massive attack on the American people in the history of government.

They promise health care for everyone, but they will not -- and they can't possibly -- deliver it. The numbers don't lie.


References: Sick in America: 'Free' Is Good? (ABC News), There's no such thing as free health care (Reason Magazine), Social Security and Medicare Projections: 2009 (National Center for Policy Analysis), Who is Debby Smith?, E.R. P.R., Bureau of Labor Statistics, July 2009.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

That was quick: reports filtering in of health care premiums for families rising $2,400 annually in reaction to today's signing of Demcare bill

Karl Denninger relays a note published just hours after the Democrats celebrated the signing of DemCare.

So I just got a call from my health insurance provider. My family rates are going up $200/month ... $2400/year per employee effective April 1st. Didn't take long after signing to get this s**t going.

So much for the "my plan will save Americans" $2500/year in Healthcare premiums...

Yes, this law will induce people to hire, it will improve health access, and it will be positive for the consumer, economy, stock market and spending... [and the] market rallies on for today, as I sit back and chuckle to myself... "I told you so."

Please, buy more stocks to drive the DOW, S&P, Nasdaq and Russell higher on the mythical economic "recovery" and mythical job gains that will take hold as employers, right here and now, four full years before the "benefits" show up for adults in this bill (those very same workers) get whammied for $2,400 per year in additional costs per employee.

...One way or another the employees will be paying every single penny of that cost. Either directly through lower wages (which will do great things for consumer spending and the economy) or indirectly as people are either laid off or not hired in the first place.

Why are premiums for families certain to rise? Because of the Democrats' ham-handed attempts at social engineering, which are reminiscent of their "mortgage affordability programs". And those turned out so very well.

...health experts said the proposed regulations pertaining to children will result in higher premiums for consumers. The issue of who will pay the medical costs of the nation's uninsured and underinsured children, especially those with potentially debilitating and lifelong conditions, is not yet settled.

...Tim McBride, a health economist and associate dean of public health at the Brown School at Washington University, said he expects the cost of mandating health coverage for chronically and severely ill children to be "absorbed by the health insurance companies, causing them to raise premiums.

Gee, you mean the Democrats were lying when they said if you liked your health care you could keep it? And that quality of care would improve? And prices would decline? While adding 30 to 47 million more people? Who'da thunk it?

And this news aligns with reports that small businesses are preparing for the worst.

"It's going to create huge uncertainty and the potential for another downtick in the economy fed by that uncertainty," said Keith Ashmus, a partner at Frantz Ward LLP, a law firm in Cleveland. He said the bill will "almost certainly" lead to increased health insurance costs for businesses with more than 50 employees — like his.

"And it's going to result in a lot of people looking at the structure of their business to see how they can structure themselves to avoid horrendous penalties," Ashmus told FoxNews.com.

Some people never learn. We call those people "Democrats".


Update: Dyslexic POTUS Confused his Symbols?

Original images: Reuters.

What I'm reading now: "Learning from failure in the NHS?"

Just trying to prepare myself for the inevitable (PDF).

The number of inquiries into failures of care in the NHS has increased markedly in recent years. The early inquiries date back to the late 1960s and the consistent patterns of failure, which have been revealed over more than 3 decades, are striking. They raise major challenges for public policy and for the protection of individuals in public care.

This paper asks about the purposes of inquiries; it looks at the different types of inquiry which have been established and at the methods and processes used. It also explores the results of inquiries and the changes in policy which have arisen from their recommendations. Some of these inquiries have examined high profile cases, which attracted great publicity, while others have escaped the glare of national attention.

Nevertheless, all of them are important for what they tell us about the quality of care provided to individuals in the NHS.

This paper argues that it is vital to examine the ways in which we conduct inquiries. They consume vast resources (particularly financial and human) and it is important that they satisfy their purpose in the most appropriate way. It concludes that there is more we can learn from failures of care, in the past, in order to improve the health service of the future.

Yes, you've got it: this paper reviews decades of inquiries into the disastrous failures of the U.K.'s ruinous National Health Service.

This is a preview of your future. This is the system Democrats chose to emulate when they shredded our Constitution.


"I, for one, welcome our new Democrat overlords"

Having health care is going to be just like Christmas, according to certain intellectually challenged residents of Durham, North Carolina.

"It's just going to be like Christmas," said DeCarlo Flythe, who lost health coverage for his family when he was laid off almost three years ago. "It's going to be great. You know, no worries (about) the bills. We are going to go ahead and pay our co-pay and be alright."

[His] wife has insurance, but the couple couldn't afford to put him on the policy. Now, he's excited he may also have coverage because of health care reform... "It'll make the world better. It'll make us all better, actually," he said.

I think someone forgot to tell DeCarlo that his Constitutional right to free, unlimited and instant health care doesn't kick in until 2014.


Hat tip: Memeorandum.

Monday, March 22, 2010

What I'm reading now: "Management of MRI Wait Lists in Canada"

Just trying to be prepared.

Sigh.

'Only Chumps and Hypocrites' Will Pay For Health Insurance Under DemCare Because Insurers Must Cover All Preexisting Conditions!

Art Mutt at News from Doswell penned another brilliantly conceived op-ed (by my count, his 4,323rd in a row).

..."Since preexisting conditions will be covered under the law, then there is no reason to continue padding the coffers of the evil health insurance companies, who are only using your premiums to withhold coverage from all those poor, uncovered props, er, victims used by the President over the last month to illustrate just how evil they truly are."

Mutt claims that it will be more advantageous for policyholders to stop paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars annually in premiums to the insurance providers and remit the $2,000 fine directly to the IRS, whose 16,000 new health commission agents will be prowling the countryside, knocking on doors and verifying coverage. "If you sincerely believe the government knows more about health care than the insurance companies, then why pay those thousands of dollars when you can stroke a penalty check directly to the government who knows better too what is best for you?" he asked. "God knows the IRS can make better use of your money than Anthem, or Optima or one of those other awful organizations."

..."When those IRS agents come a’knockin’, just look them in the eye, tell them no, you have no health insurance, but you will happily pay the no-insurance fine," Mutt stated, "And you may also want to whisper to them that neighbors Marv and Dot, two doors down, carry one of those reviled ‘discount’ health plans – you know, the ones deemed ‘unacceptable’ by the Health Commission, bought off a business card tacked up in a Sheetz Station. It may be worth a discount in your own IRS penalty payment to see Marv and Dot hauled away to insurance prison!"

"Then, if you have a diagnosis of colon cancer – boo-yah! Get on the phone to Anthem, tell ‘em you have cancer, and that you want to buy health insurance to cover your treatments... And tell 'em they better not gouge you because of the cancer, because that is illegal now. Better for them to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for your cancer treatments than for you to pay premiums when you aren’t even sick."

"That’s not crazy, that's just good economic sense."

Mutt stresses that health insurance companies are despicable entities to be vilified, unless their services are needed. “They’re terrible people, what with their 2% profit margins and all. Paying for health insurance today, after passage of this law, is the old ‘Bush-era’ way of doing things.”

"If you support the Health Reform Law, don’t be a hypocrite," he adds, "Cancel that health insurance – today!"

Seriously, since coverage for preexisting conditions is guaranteed by force of law, you'd have to be insane to keep paying those monthly premiums.

Rhetoric and Reality

Senator Barack Obama, August 28, 2008:

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach... These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington...

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive...

...Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it... I will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America... I will eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and the start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow...

...I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class...

...As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power...

...Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves...

...Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their jobs and caring for a sick child or ailing parent...

...Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses; and the time to protect Social Security for future generations...

...Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I've laid out how I'll pay for every dime - by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

David Axelrod and George Soros performed their roles well. With the help of a compliant mainstream media, they fooled just enough of the American people to elect a man who despises the Constitution.


Join me on the Impeach & Convict Tour 2011

Dear Democrats,

I don't think you have any idea how angry we are.

So you would institute an authoritarian bureaucracy like the one our founders despised and revolted against? You would completely disregard public opinion? You would bribe, threaten, reward and punish legislators -- with our money! -- to jam through an unprecedented agenda completely antithetical to our founding? You would saddle generations yet unborn with trillions in debt when your unfunded entitlements are already crushing us? You would redistribute trillions of American wealth in futile central planning schemes that can't work and have never worked in the entire history of the world? So you would destroy the greatest health care system in the world?

And, to top it all off, you would blatantly violate your oath to uphold the Constitution?

November will come. And paybacks are hell.

And we promise to pursue you and your ilk to the ends of the Earth. To unearth your crimes. To impeach those in power and to prosecute the rest. To unwind your Marxist schemes. To politically crush the Democrat Party and leave it as much of a force as are the Whigs.

What you are doing is nothing less than child abuse. Punishing the next generation and generations yet unborn. Which seems to be the only skill the Democrat Party possesses.

So enjoy these next few months. Anticipating that ambassadorship to Aruba. Or that cushy job on K street. Or some high-paying job as a bureaucrat in Fannie Mae.

Be warned. We will pursue you. And we will punish you. Guaran-damn-teed. It's not a threat. It's not a promise. It's an oath.


Sunday, March 21, 2010

Barney Frank on the Rule of Law

The toad-like Barney Frank weighed in this afternoon on the Capitol's raucous crowd as Democrats bribed, cajoled and threatened their caucus to vote for a government takeover of health care.

Rep Michael Turner (R-Ohio) walked by carrying a sign saying “I’m voting no!” Trent Franks, a Republican of Arizona and Pete Olson, a Republican of Texas, came down to thank the Tea Partiers for their support.

Inside the House chamber, a protester was ejected by Capitol Police after yelling from the House gallery.

Frank was visibly angry with his GOP colleagues, whom he believed goaded the protesters.

"Did you guys see the Republicans encouraging the disruption?" Frank left the House floor to tell about 15 reporters. "These clowns are out there encouraging violation of the law and making the job of the guys up there harder. It's really disgraceful."

This pathetic excuse for a legislator spits on the United States Constitution, claims to have granted "rights" by stealing the labor of others, and -- to top it off -- promotes the bankruptcy of the country by expanding entitlements at a time when we can least afford it?

And he's angry about a protester?

I'll tell you what I'm angry about. A man like Barney Frank who started his law-breaking days when he allowed a brothel to operate out of his condo and never paid a price. A man who is culminating his career with the destruction of the American experiment, changing forever the relationship between the individual and government. Citizens of Massachusetts: you could select a representative by throwing a dart at a phone book and do significantly better than this disgraceful troll.


Update: Attorneys general launch lawsuit backlash against Demcare.

Update II: Eight Health Care Charts That Depict the Utter Cruelty of DemCare.

Eight Health Care Charts That Depict the Utter Cruelty of DemCare








Rather than honestly address the impending entitlement catastrophe, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are adding a brand new unfunded entitlement.

These Democrats are historic alright; they will live in infamy.


Source: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Hat tip: Charlie Foxtrot.

The Health Care Travails of Citizen Barack Obama


What if Barack Obama were just a normal citizen? A normal, taxpaying schmoe like you and me. These are his stories. These are the travails of Citizen Obama.

Mr. Obama, I'm sorry to say that your wife's mother is suffering from some serious ailments.

We'll need to do an extensive battery of tests. Her white blood cell count is elevated, which could mean a variety of things.

Also, it appears she needs a hip replacement.

Doctor, thank you. Even though this is family, I don't want you to go to extraordinary lengths.

You know what? We should cut costs.

It pains me to say this, but don't do any tests.

Don't give her that expensive drug. It treats a rare disease and is very expensive. The last thing I'd want to do is run up costs for other Americans.

No, she's getting up there in years, and according to Ezekiel Emanuel's "Complete Lives System", she's consumed enough of our precious community health care resources.

No, we're not going to go to the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins or some other top-notch facility.

Who am I to demand cutting-edge treatment? Those extra tests? Cutting-edge drugs? No, we don't want any of those.

And look. She's 79, for heaven's sake. Forget about the hip replacement.

She can handle it, she's tougher than nails.

Look, bottom line: just give her some painkillers. It's the progressive thing to do.

Stupak: the Sanctity of Life is Important to Us, Which is Why We Will Slash Care for Old People and Further Enslave Children to Massive Deficits

Moments ago, Democrat Bart Stupak announced that a deal had been brokered between the President and the Democrat pro-life contingent in the House.

In exchange for their votes, the President will sign an Executive Order banning -- supposedly -- federal spending on abortions. Nancy Pelosi gets a dozen or so hard-fought votes that almost guarantee the successful passage of the Senate health care bill in the House.

Ironically, Stupak's pro-life posse of Democrats are assuredly condemning children and generations yet unborn to massive deficits, when our existing entitlement programs are already broken.

The bill uses every account gimmick known to man -- including slashing Medicare payments (really humane, Bart) and double-counting the cuts -- and invents a few new ones to create a brand new entitlement when the country is already in dire financial straits.

This bill fundamentally changes the relationship between the federal government and the people; and it does so in a despicably evil way. Health care will, there is no doubt, be wielded as a political weapon to reward and punish.

Congratulations, Bart Stupak and your so-called "Pro-Life" Democrat Caucus, you've sentenced the unborn generations of this country to misery, poverty and economic ruin. Way to stay true to your beliefs.

You aren't pro-life, you're low-lives.


Update: "You deserve better."

Update II: Eight Health Care Charts That Depict the Utter Cruelty of DemCare.

President Creates or Saves 16,500 Jobs of IRS Agents Who Will Work in the New Federal Health Care Enforcement Division

The Internal Revenue Service, the country's most beloved agency, will soon be hiring if CubaCare passes.

Obamacare will result in the creation of at least 16,500 new jobs. Doctors? Nurses? Ha! Dream on, suckers. That’s 16,500 new IRS agents, who’ll be needed to check whether you — yes, you, Mr. and Mrs. Hopendope of 27 Hopeychangey Gardens — are in compliance with the 15 tax increases and dozens of new federal mandates the Deemocrats are about to “deem” into existence. This will be the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II — and that’s change you can believe in. This is what “health” “care” “reform” boils down to: fewer doctors, longer wait times, but more bureaucrats.

Oh, please, Senator Nogoodnick, I need that kidney transplant! I know my age exceeded the government-approved limit on Life Quality Years™, but I really want to live...

The health bills being pushed through Congress put important decisions in the hands of presidential appointees like [Rahm Emanuel's brother] Dr. [Ezekiel] Emanuel. They will decide what insurance plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have, and what seniors get under Medicare.

...In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and co-authors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others... Dr. Emanuel concedes that his plan appears to discriminate against older people, but he explains: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination...

When you add politics into health care, you've created a truly evil brew. These malevolent Democrat hack politicians will, if this bill passes, use health care as a weapon against the people. They will reward allies and punish enemies. They will withhold treatment, share personal data, and exercise control over every American's life.

In fact, every single aspect of their despicable activities are at odds with the American founding, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

And they don't care. Not a bit. Because, for Democrats, socialism trumps patriotism.


Today is a momentous day. Today we lose our right to choose.

by Victor the Contractor

Today is a Momentous Day!

Today is the day! Today is the day that all Americans see the naked ambition of fifteen percent of the population as they exert their will over the silent, hard working 85 percent. Today is the culmination of many years of hard work in swaying public perception, breaking down the walls of decency and building a climate of victimization and entitlement. Today the House of Representatives votes on the Senate Health Care Reform Act.

Never mind that no one has actually read this pork nirvana: this bill that nationalizes one sixth of the economy. Never mind that this bill is a slap in the face to all who work hard and don't expect or would accept a handout from anyone. Never mind that, on its face, the bill is a brazen attempt to subvert the Constitution of the United States and assign obligations to buy a service and criminalization of the God-given right to choose.

The right to choose not to buy a service one may see as a bad bargain, or the right to decide what is right for your own body. Those who have eroded the belief in right and wrong for decades; who have literally made a federal case over the right to control a person's body; who have cried that the state had no business, indeed no say at all, about what what one put in their body, believed in their head, and even what they did to their unborn children. Now those very same harpies have turned that tenet on its head as they grasp at the ability to regulate every aspect of what we do with the body God gave us.

A God they do not believe in and they do not seem accountable to. For we live in a time where the ugliest of motivations are cloaked in compassion. A time where the killing of an unborn child is seen as 'kind' as opposed to saddling a selfish couple with the 'burden' of raising unwanted offspring. A time where the lazy and the losers in the lottery of life are trying to maintain a lifestyle by taxing the driven and conscientious people who make this country hum with productivity. These are times that try the morals of men as those who want to invalidate hard work and drive have control of the levers of power and use that awful responsibility for their own gain and avarice.

Before you go on and whine about the poor and stricken and the addict who can neither care for themselves or have the tools to prosper in this world, know this: Life is a harsh taskmaster who punishes the dumb, the lazy and the foolish with scourge and tribulation until they learn to operate within the constraints of civilization. Lessons you don't learn or fail to heed as a child will be revisited repeatedly until you get with the program, succumb to the destruction brought on by your own lusts. Attempts to rewrite God's law, or common sense, for those agnostically inclined, will always result in an unbalanced society that careens hither and yon morally, until it sputters to a halt, mired in the ambivalence of indecision and relativism. A civilization that feels more empathy for the sinners than the sinned-against is destined to fail as the criminals achieve a critical mass and take the controls in efforts to profit from the moral decline.

We have such a state of affairs now. The ugly girl at the dance is now calling the tune, much to the chagrin of the highly offended orchestra. The drop-outs who threw stones at the University's stained glass windows now are the faculty; destroying the ideas and ethics that made this country great. There is a joke in the trades that men teach their children to work before they go off to college and get ruined. The ability to define right and wrong is the hallmark of a great society and the lack thereof the talisman of a civilization in decline. The loafers and anti-establishment crowd of the sixties are now deciding the tax rate for the rest of us, and they are not amused anymore. They are out for revenge. Revenge on the 'boy scouts' who kept their collective noses clean and worked eighty hours a week and put their kids through college and took care of their ailing parents and saluted on Veteran's Day all across this fine country.

'Liberal' doesn't even begin to appropriately label these Marxists! They really are the failed Communists who sewed the cancer of relativism into our public psyche and tried with all of their drug-addled reasoning to convince the rest of us that drive and vigor were not valid traits and conscientiousness was tantamount to selfishness. That success was to be punished, or at least taxed to support the 'less able' among us.

The Democrat majority in both Houses and the Marxist in the White House are poised to enact their vengeance today on all those who ignored their pleas for fairness and charity to the losers and lazy in society. Today they can 'get over' on the corporate toadies and millionaires who rule over and abuse the working class. If it were that easy, FDR, LBJ or even Ralph Nader would have so changed the collective zeitgeist to such an extant that this latest populist farce would be ignored, even maligned by the healthy, prosperous and well adjusted masses.

Instead we have an anti-St. Patrick leading the snakes from the swamps right into the halls of power. Its ironic that the 'most transparent' government in history has hidden its agenda and blocked public reflection on its programs. Its ironic that even the President is not sure what is actually in the health care bill and more troubling that he doesn't care by what process it arrives at his desk. It will be law, no matter how many seats are lost in the coming elections.

This rush to political suicide by an overtly socialist Democrat Party barely disguises the real intent of this travesty of legislative process: the health care reform bill is Communism. Socialism is a 'cooperative' between business and Government. Communism's hallmark is the Government's possession of the means of production. I trot out this aged mare to make a point: a government that can nationalize the better part of a native automobile industry is, by its very nature, Communistic. Such a Government should not be trusted to 'nurse' a substantially healthy industry. Period. If its too big to fail, its just too big.

If the Government can decide that an entire industry needs to be saved and defies its own Constitution to do so, then that Government is invalid and must go. I trust that the Supreme Court will strike this law as soon as the mountain of lawsuits start. But what do we make of a process by which a minority of the population forces its mindset on the majority? Under what authority have GM and Chrysler been seized? Its not Constitutional. And neither is this health care bill.

Yes, today is a momentous day! It is the day we declare war on Liberalism. Today is the day we record the vote for this Communistic legislation. Today we make plans to campaign against our socialist Senators, reprobate Representatives and power-hungry President. And, pass or fail, we will know who voted for our 'right to choose' and who opted for a 'Stalinization' of our legislative process. It works both ways: Freedom of choice extends to the right to choose NOT to do, buy or consume anything, for whatever reason.

"Give me Liberty or give me death!"

Victor The Contractor