This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Health Care debate

  • That Republican conspiracy against healthcare

    Obama told a talk show host this morning that he sees a Republican conspiracy against him and not necessarily against his health care plan (Washington Times link);

    “I think early on, a decision was made by the Republican leadership that said, ‘Look, let’s not give him a victory, maybe we can have a replay of 1993, ’94, when Clinton came in, he failed on health care and then we won in the mid-term elections and we got the majority. And I think there are some folks who are taking a page out that playbook,” the president said.

    So our opposition to his health care plan is because we don’t like him – everything is about him these days. Except that’s not necessarily true in my case – and I suspect, it’s not true in your case either.

    Next month, I turn 54 years old, and I began planning for my retirement health care when I was 19 when I joined the Army. I kind of liked the idea that when I broke my hand in basic training, the Army provided me with medical attention. It wasn’t the best, but it worked. OK, so I have one crooked finger, now. I could still shoot straight.

    A few years later, I got married and my son was born a year later. Health care for him was almost free. It was one of the things I considered when I reenlisted. I accepted my low pay because the Army took care of my family health-wise. So that became part of my old-age planning.

    Now, as I near my final retirement, this Obama fellow tells me, after paying for my own health care with my youth, I owe for someone else’s health care. Someone who wouldn’t join the military, someone who is just sitting on their ass waiting for Obama to hand them some free health care – at my expense.

    Am I worried Obama will succeed at changing my health care system? Not particularly – I have the VSOs sticking up for me which is I why I joined a few. What I’m most worried about is that while my income is reduced after I retire, I’m going to be saddled with paying for some derelict’s family health care.

    Am I being selfish? Not as selfish as that lazy SOB who won’t insure his own family. And I don’t want to hear that he’s too poor to afford insurance for his family – if he’s poor, why is he dragging kids into his poverty?

    Not everyone in America has military health care – yet 86% of people living in this country are covered by their own health insurance. We were all responsible and took care of our respective families, how does that make us responsible for some other schlub’s poor choices?

  • Democrat corporate shills? Unpossible!

    I remember that during the Bush Administration, because VP Cheney once worked at Haliburton, somehow it proved that Bush and Cheney were working to make that company profitable so Cheney could get some sort of remuneration from the relationship. It’s difficult to find a newspaper article that doesn’t mention Cheney and Haliburton in the same line at least once.

    Well, I started reading Michelle Malkin’s latest book Culture of Corruption this week – mostly because I’m the only person who wasn’t reading it (it’s Number 1 on Amazon for nonfiction US politics and number 8 of all of their books) – so this morning, it looks like she’s working on a new chapter.

    It appears that David Axelrod maintains a relationship with his former employer, who owes him money and continues to employ his son. That’s a closer relationship than Cheney had with Haliburton, isn’t it? Well, not in the world of the well-intentioned Liberals;

    White House flack Gibbs called any suggestion that Axelrod benefits from the relationship “ridiculous.” Retorted Gibbs: “David has left his firm to join public service.” So when Republicans trade power and access, Team Obama calls that being “in cahoots” with business. But when noble servants like Axelrod do it, it’s called “public service.”

    Ms. Malkin explains Axelrod’s ties on Hannity the other night;

    Five Feet of Fury writes;

    Malkin and Hannity savored the irony: that the same White House insiders and Democrat operatives eager to smear town hall protesters as “Astroturfers” funded by “big corporations” are themselves funded by… big corporations. Adding insult to irony, these are the very same “big corporations,” Malkin noted, that liberals like Obama and his supporters supposedly believe are so “evil.”

    I guess today is Hypocrisy Day at TAH.

  • Post sees light

    The editorial board of the Washington Post gives Obama sound advice today by admitting that he should drop proposals for a “public option”.

    This is not a matter of ideology but of political nose-counting. The kind of comprehensive health reform that the president rightly wants — changes that would extend affordable coverage to millions of people and help slow the growth of health-care costs — requires 60 votes in the Senate. Democrats could muscle through some provisions with 50 votes, but a Senate rule limits how much can be done through that route. Measures such as establishing insurance exchanges or imposing new coverage requirements on insurance companies, as President Obama has been emphasizing, might be vulnerable to being stricken. And there’s no way to amass 60 votes with a public option in the bill.

    Whether the Obama Administration really wants health care reform or if they’re just using it as political leverage will determine their next move(s). Obviously, there is not strong support for the public in Congress. In fact, Dave Boren, an Oklahoma Democrat, promised his constituents that he’d shave his head if he ever voted for the public option.

    Democrats would lose a big issue if they ever passed the public option, anyway – they don’t want to do that. It’s much easier to blame Republicans for the failure of health care reform than to actually give Americans an option that actually works.

    A commenter in the Washington Post misses the point completely;

    rcasero wrote:
    NO. The WH should ditch any attempt to work with Republicans. They have been nothing but obstructionists.

    Yeah, it’s not the Republicans causing this to fail, it’s Democrats. The President’s party controls the House and Senate (like they did in 1993 when Hillarycare failed) – they don’t need Republicans to pass this bill, based on sheer numbers. If it was a workable plan, Democrats should be able to get it through on their own.

    But I guess it’s easier to just blame those evil Republicans and the nebulous “lobbyists”.

    I doubt, however that the ideologues in the Democrat Party – the same bozos who opposed the war only because it was a Republican war – will allow the Obama Administration to walk away from the public option. They’d rather watch it die a slow and painful death than to actually accomplish something.

    Actually, so would I, but for more practical reasons.

  • A preview of death panels from VA

    In the Wall Street Journal, Jim Towey exposes the use of death counseling at VA;

    Last year, bureaucrats at the VA’s National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, “Your Life, Your Choices.” It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA’s preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated “Your Life, Your Choices.”

    Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

    Funny how this program gets switched back on when this administration comes in. But then veterans’ care is the government laboratory for administering it’s own civilian health care plans.

  • 60,000 resign from AARP

    I’ve hated AARP as long as I can remember because they’ve so blatantly opposed to everything that has stood in their way to soak seniors out of their savings. They’ve sold crappy insurance and crappy annuities under the guise of a special club for seniors. They were nothing more than an insurance brokerage.

    Despite their attempts to refute the president’s announcement that AARP supported his health care proposals last week, Americans knew from their past behavior, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Now they’re voting with their feet, according to CBS News;

    CBS News has learned that up to 60,000 people have cancelled their AARP memberships since July 1, angered over the group’s position on health care.

    Elaine Guardiani has been with AARP for 14 years, and said, “I’m extremely disappointed in AARP.”

    Retired nurse Dale Anderson has 12 years with AARP and said, “I don’t wanna be connected with AARP.”

    Many are switching to the American Seniors Association, a group that calls itself the conservative alternative as CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

    It was inevitable. By spending a little bit of time doing the research, you can buy better insurance and annuities than AARP offers and probably save yourself some money in the bargain. They’ve tried to instill fear in their members when the Bush Social Security plan might have saved it for a few more years. They used fear to prevent younger Americans from being able to invest part of their Social Security contributions and have a shot at having real returns and a real income in their retirements.

    I hope AARP dies a quick yet painful death.

  • Left puts foot down

    The Obama Administration let word out through Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the “government option” isn’t “essential” to their healthcare plan. Apparently, the rest of the left doesn’t agree. Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucas issued this statement;

    The public option is central to healthcare reform. Real reform, which lowers costs and ensures all Americans get the quality, affordable healthcare that they deserve, cannot be accomplished without a robust public option. As we have stated repeatedly for months now, a majority of the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will oppose any healthcare reform legislation that does not include a robust public option.

    They sound angry, don’t they? Pretty adamant about foisting a huge debt on taxpayers. Well, they’re not alone according to the Associated Press;

    “You really can’t do health reform” without allowing the government to compete with private insurers, said Howard Dean, a former Democratic Party chairman. “Let’s not say we’re doing health reform without a public option,” he added in a slap at the administration’s latest move.

    His remarks were echoed by lawmakers as well as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who said the option was the only way to force “real competition” on the insurance industry.

    The Hill writes that Congressional Democrats are warning that what they think is an attempted Senate compromise will cost Obama votes in the House.

    Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) asserted that rumored compromises on a Senate bill to win centrist votes would torpedo healthcare reform’s prospects with liberal members of the House.

    “If the president thinks he’s cutting a deal to get Senate votes, he’s probably losing House votes,” Weiner warned during an interview on CNBC this morning.

    The liberal New York Democrat said that healthcare reform would be essentially meaningless without having a public option made available for consumers.

    Me? I’m just buying popcorn. Democrats aren’t in the business of finding solutions, they only want issues. They did the same thing in 1993 and now we can sit back and watch them do it again.

    By the way, it’s the townhall protests that are doing this to them – so don’t stop that stuff.

  • Obama death threats up…or not

    Drudge links to this ABC story under this headline;

    obama-death-threats

    Of course the article has the fingerprints of Mark Potok from Southern Poverty Law Center all over it;

    “I don’t think these are simply people who are mentally ill or off their rocker,” Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News of those behind the threats. “In a very real sense they represent a genuine reaction, a genuine backlash against Obama.”

    Heh- SPLC’s Intelligence Project. It obviously needs more funding because I can’t find any intelligence at SPLC – especially in the project’s director.

    ABC takes up Potok’s scare mongering tone by recounting the swastika painted on the sign outside of Congressman David Scott’s office – without mentioning that Scott taunted his constituency and that the perpetrator hasn’t been found yet – so who can responsibly discuss the motivations yet given the large number of fake noose scares and swastika spraypaintings in recent years?

    Oh, and Rush Limbaugh said that the Obama White House logo for the healthcare plan looks like a Nazi symbol. I don’t see it, except for wings over a circle. Sounds like blather to me;

    obama-healthcare-logo

    nazi-logo

    But I remember that the Left said Homeland Security sounded like a Nazi or a USSR nomenclature.

    Anyway, race-baiting, fear-monger Potok says we’re all racists;

    “I think the president has, in effect, triggered fears amongst fairly large numbers of white people in this country that they are somehow losing their country, that the battle is lost,” Potok told ABC News. “The nation that their Christian white forefathers created has somehow been taken from them.”

    Yup, that has to be it. The thing is the article has buried among the ads, on the second html page says the White House hasn’t noticed any increase in death threats, but they put that paragraph next to a photo of the jackass who took his handgun to a protest against the President;

    obama-death-threats2

    So we should be worried about death threats on the President because Potok is the only guy in the whole country who thinks “right wing hate” is on the rise.

  • WaPo ignores real news

    Washington Post‘s Michael D. Shear and Anne E. Kornblut wrote this wonderful article about the joyful time President Obama had in Montana today. Apparently, the townhall meeting that they saw was all candy and rainbows for the President.

    The recounted all of the questions the President was asked. Well, they missed reporting on one – one that was pretty important. I watched the townhall meeting and wondered where was the guy who asked Obama how he planned to pay for all of this happy-joy healthcare stuff without raising our taxes. I had to go to Fox News to find a report about that;

    President Obama on Friday finally had to face a challenge at a town-hall-style meeting about the bottom line of his health care plan.

    A Montana man asserted that Obama would have to raise Americans’ taxes to pay for his plan to overhaul the health care system.

    I also remember the deer-in-the-headlights look Obama had when the man asked the question. In response, Obama made up some shit about cutting subsidies to the insurance industry to pay for our health care.

    Now granted, I’ve seen some news outlets ignore civility at the townhall meetings and only discuss the dramatic outbursts. I guess Washington Post decided that they’d just skip over Obama finally getting a tough question.