Michael Medved touched on Lady Gaga’s (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) astute and candid admissions about her addiction to marijuana. In this revealing discussion, she weaves a tale that has led her to a sober (more sober?) life. I give her props and pray she is not part of “Club Twenty-Seven.” More importantly, I hope she finds the Life Medved mentions (as I wish for Michael as well).
Author: Papa Giorgio
As if the President Has the Authority To Allow or Disallow This! This is the Crux of the Issue
I applaud Bill for saying this, and he may be saying it as a lead up to his wife using this as an issue to get the nomination for the Dems… who knows. But people are not catching that the President of the United States should have NO SAY whatsoever in a private citizen having a contractual agreement with a private business about a healthcare plan. The sickness in thinking government is the answer and has the right to even be involved in these levels of contractual agreement of its body-politic is something that needs to be rectified in conversations with friends and family.
Two Left Leaning Journalists Dissect Obamacare ~ Michael Medved
Here are the two article excerpts and links below that Medved references, the first is from the NYT’s and is by Anemona Hartocollis:
Talk of Penalty Is Missing in Ads for Health Care
New York’s health exchange slogan is “Today’s the Day.” Minnesota has enlisted Paul Bunyan. Oregon held a music contest, and California stresses the “peace of mind” that will come with insurance.
The state and federal health insurance exchanges are using all manner of humor and happy talk to sell the Affordable Care Act’s products. But the one part of the new system that they are not quick to trumpet is the financial penalty that Americans will face if they fail to buy insurance.
On state exchange websites, mention of the penalty is typically tucked away under “frequently asked questions,” if it appears at all. Television and print ads usually skip the issue, and operators of exchange telephone banks are instructed to discuss it only if asked. The federal website, now infamous for its glitches, mentions the penalty but also calls it a fee, or an Individual Shared Responsibility Payment.
The euphemisms and avoidance of any discussion of the penalty are no accident, both supporters and critics of the law say. While the mandate for all Americans to buy health insurance — with a penalty if they do not — was the linchpin of the Supreme Court decision upholding the law, and is considered the key to its success, poll after poll has found that it is also the least popular part of the program.
State exchange operators say that they are not trying to hide the penalty, but that their market research has taught them that, at least in the initial phase, consumers will be more receptive to soothing messages and appeals to their sense of collective responsibility than to threats of punishment.
“We feel that the carrot is better than the stick,” said Larry Hicks, a spokesman for Covered California. “This is a new endeavor. We want people to come in and test our wares.”
Here is Lori Gottlieb’s article via the NYT’s:
Daring to Complain About Obamacare
THE Anthem Blue Cross representative who answered my call told me that there was a silver lining in the cancellation of my individual P.P.O. policy and the $5,400 annual increase that I would have to pay for the Affordable Care Act-compliant option: now if I have Stage 4 cancer or need a sex-change operation, I’d be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions. Never mind that the new provider network would eliminate coverage for my and my son’s long-term doctors and hospitals.
The Anthem rep cheerily explained that despite the company’s — I paraphrase — draconian rates and limited network, my benefits, which also include maternity coverage (handy for a 46-year-old), would “be actually much richer.”
I, of course, would be actually much poorer. And it was this aspect of the bum deal that, to my surprise, turned out to be a very unpopular thing to gripe about.
“Obamacare or Kafkacare?” I posted on Facebook as soon as I hung up with Anthem. I vented about the call and wrote that the president should be protecting the middle class, not making our lives substantially harder. For extra sympathy, I may have thrown in the fact that I’m a single mom. (O.K., I did.)
Then I sat back and waited for the love to pour in. Or at least the “like.” Lots of likes. After all, I have 1,037 Facebook friends. Surely, they’d commiserate.
Except that they didn’t.
Instead, aside from my friend David, who attempted to cheer me up with, “My dad, who never turns down a bargain, would take the sex change just because it’s free,” my respondents implied — in posts that, to my annoyance, kept getting more “likes” — that it was beyond uncool to be whining about myself when the less fortunate would finally have insurance.
“The nation has been better off,” wrote one friend. “Over 33 million people who did not have insurance are now going to get it.” That’s all fine and good for “the nation,” but what about my $5,400 rate hike (after-tax dollars, I wanted to add, but dared not in this group of previously closeted Mother Teresas)? Another friend wrote, “Yes, I’m paying an extra 200 a month, but I’m okay with doing that so that others who need it can have health care.”
I was shocked. Who knew my friends were such humanitarians? Has Obamacare made it un-P.C. to be concerned by a serious burden on my family’s well-being?
`Obama Should Take a Toke on the Mayor of Toronto’s Crack Pipe to Boost Approval` ~ James Carville
Palin Slaps Down NBC Spin as Matt Lauer Hopes People `Forgive` President’s ObamaCare Lies
On Monday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer declared that President Obama “apologized” for ObamaCare failures, “not only the issues with the website, but broken promises as well.” Turning to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Lauer hoped Obama’s vague statement of regret was the end of the story: “Did he say what he had to say?”
Palin shot down Lauer’s assertion that the President had taken responsibility for the disastrous health care rollout: “What apology? What apology? He kind of acknowledged a bit that there is a broken website. The broken website is the least of America’s worries. This broken website, I think, is symbolic of a broken administration – takeover of 1/6 of our economy and this socialized medicine that’s being crammed down our throat, that’s what’s broken.”
More in the cross-post on the MRC’s NewsBusters blog.
University Students face expulsion for defending themselves with gun
Via Gateway Pundit:
Thank You For Your Service!
Single-Payer/Government Run Healthcare IS a Monopoly/Corporate
Definitions:
a situation in which the government owns and controls a particular industry and there is no competition.
Except, government often times is impossible to fire through not buying a product the market does not need or want any longer! GM — as you will read — is a prime example. But first, Health “Care”:
NHS targets ‘may have led to 1,200 deaths’ in Mid-Staffordshire
NHS managers were yesterday accused of putting targets and cost-cutting ahead of patients as a report into at Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals trust found up to 1,200 people may have died needlessly due to “appalling standards of care” at a single hospital.
“The problems first emerged after the hospital was reported in 2007 to have high mortality rates among patients.
But the trust’s board of directors “fobbed off” NHS investigators by saying the rates were a result of statistical errors.
Yesterday the Healthcare Commission concluded this was not that case. The report stated that staff members claimed care of patients had become secondary to government-imposed targets.
The report said there was a “reluctance to acknowledge or even consider that the care of patients was poor”.
Nurses were threatened with the sack because of the number of breaches of the target to treat A&E patients within four hours and felt they were “in the firing line”.
Patients in danger of breaching the target were put in a ‘clinical decision unit’ which was a “dumping ground” for patients in order to “stop the clock” on the waiting time.
Relatives came forward to report, nurses shouting at patients, staff failed to treat patients with compassion or dignity and respect, lack of help with meals or drinks, and failures to treat bed sores. One compared the hospital treatment to the “Third World”.
A survey found two thirds of doctors would not be happy to have a relative of theirs treated at the hospital….
The Mirror added:
…After the paper by Robert Francis QC into how bosses at Stafford simply stopped caring for patients, it emerged eight more hospitals were being investigated over high death rates…. Mr Francis said: “This is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people. “They were failed by a system which ignored the warning signs and put corporate self-interest and cost control ahead of patients and safety.”
The, “Death Panels,” if-you-will, Sarah Palin was exonerated for. The following is from a FaceBook response to a friend:
…the was to show how the Obama admin is stacking the books with GM. You see, when the government chooses winners-and-losers instead of getting contracts with private companies (like Ford, GM, etc.), they are invested to [i.e., forced to] only choose a government run business and stock their fish (so-to-speak) with GM fleets… leaving the non-government company to flounder.
This next audio deals with the differences of the Koch brothers, in comparison to the Left’s version of them, Soros. There are many areas that one can discuss about the two… but let us focus in on the main/foundational difference. One wants a large government that is able to legislate more than just what kind of light-bulbs one can use in the privacy of their own home. Soros wants large government able to control a large portion of the economy (see link to chart below), and he has been very vocal on this goal. The other party always mentioned are the Koch brothers. These rich conservatives want a weak government. A government that cannot effect our daily lives nearly as much (personal, business, etc) as the Soros enterprise wants. And really, if you think about it, what business can really “harm” you, when people come to my door with pistols on their hip… are they a) more likely to be from GM, or, b) from the IRS?
The possibility of them being from the IRS is even more possible with the passing of Obama-Care [i.e., larger government]. So the “fear” (audio in next comment) I think the Left has of “Big-Business” is unfounded, and the problem comes when big-business gets in bed with big-government. Here I am thinking of (like with the penalties that were found to be Constitutional in the recent SCOTUS decision) a government that can penalize you if you do not buy a Chevy Volt, or some other green car in order to save the planet. When this happens, guys coming to my door because of unpaid (hypothetical… but historical examples abound of the tax history of our nation) “fines” are likely to be IRS agents because of a personal choice made in the “free-market.”
Adding to the above, I note that what other area of life a person would want single-payer in:
An after thought. Since the DNC leadership has said — recently — the goal is single-payer… the question becomes this then: “what other area of life would a person want single payer in?” The airlines? Fast-food? Grocery stores? Car dealers? Education? Gyms?… coffee shops?
In other words, why would someone reject a single airline, a single grocery-store (sorry weekend BBQ’ers, no more carne-asada from Vallerta), one gym, etc. — competition drives prices down and offers the best way (supply and demand) to get to the consumer what they want… but reject all that for a system that is failing in Canada, Britain, and the like?
It seems counter-intuitive that the left likes to break up large companies/corporations that get too big, and speak about/to the “evils” large companies inflict on the consumer, but then want single-payer. Odd indeed.
CS Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
We Salute and Remember ~ NRSC
Buffalo Public Schools Spending of Tax-Payer Money
Via EAG:
Tenured BYU professor, yes you read that right, leaves Mormonism for Jesus ~ Awesome!
Michael and Lynn Wilder’s Testimony is in a book (Lynn’s testimony is on a DVD as well):
