Big Hollywood h/t:
Health-Care
A Culture Crisis-NOT a Health Care Crisis
I “Snoped” this and it checks out. A friend passed this onto me via FaceBook, and so I reproduce it here. It if an open letter to the President and makes some of the points needed to be heard… heard and the ramifications of such actions on society by said persons. This open letter is written by a young physician by the name of Dr. Roger Starner Jones. His short two-paragraph letter to the White House accurately puts the blame on a “Culture Crisis” instead of a “Health Care Crisis.” Bingo!
Dear Mr. President:
During my shift in the Emergency Room last night, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient whose smile revealed an expensive shiny gold tooth, whose body was adorned with a wide assortment of elaborate and costly tattoos, who wore a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and who chatted on a new cellular telephone equipped with a popular R&B ringtone.
While glancing over her patient chart, I happened to notice that her payer status was listed as “Medicaid”! During my examination of her, the patient informed me that she smokes more than one pack of cigarettes every day, eats only at fast-food take-outs, and somehow still has money to buy pretzels and beer. And, you and our Congress expect me to pay for this woman’s health care? I contend that our nation’s “health care crisis” is not the result of a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. Rather, it is the result of a “crisis of culture” a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on luxuries and vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. It is a culture based in the irresponsible credo that “I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me”. Once you fix this “culture crisis” that rewards irresponsibility and dependency, you’ll be amazed at how quickly our nation’s health care difficulties will disappear.
Respectfully,
ROGER STARNER JONES, MD
Obama-Care Loosing Support
Just as a side-note: Almost no one thought the earth was flat in Columbus’ day. Talk about misinformation… jeez! I wrote Leslie Marshall in the hopes she would forgo such use of non-history in the future:
Just an FYI, almost no one (including who was funding and sending Columbus to explore) believed the earth was flat. People from early Grecian days knew it was round. In other words, you were talking about misinformation and gave a misinformed analogy. Even Stephen Jay Gould said, “there never was a period of ‘flat earth darkness’ among scholars.” I suggest two books on the subject, one in-depth, the other a short chapter. The sorter read in entitled, Not So! Popular Myths About America from Columbus to Clinton. The more in-depth book, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians.
I hope this helps,
Bendover
NewsBusters has a piece explaining that the Dems have all but abandoned the fiscal ship (if there ever were one to begin with):
…It has now been five days since Politico’s Ben Smith published a powerpoint presentation created by an amalgamation of powerful left wing interest groups, conceding that two of the central arguments for passing ObamaCare – that it will lower the deficit and will reduce health care costs – have failed.
For a group of organizations integral to the passage of the law, that was a stunning admission. And yet, the mainstream press is nearly silent on the issue. Searches on Nexis and Google News reveal no coverage from the major television networks, the cable news channels (with the exception of Fox), the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, NPR, PBS, or Newsweek. To their credit, Time Magazine and the Washington Post published a blog post each on the revelation.
Even while discussing ObamaCare and its potential effects on the deficit and health care costs, some media outlets managed to avoid any mention of a fact Democrats now seem to be conceding: “the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed,” as Smith notes….
[….]
Byron York explains the significance of Herdon’s recommendations:
It’s a stunning about-face for a party that saw national health care as its signature accomplishment. “This is the first time we’ve seen from Democrats that they clearly understand they have a serious problem in terms of selling this legislation,” says Republican pollster David Winston.
The reluctance to defend Obamacare as a cost-cutter and deficit-reducer is particularly telling. Wasn’t that the No. 1 reason for passing the bill in the first place? “This legislation will … lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades,” President Obama said when he signed the bill into law on March 23. Now, Democrats are throwing that argument out the window…
The story might be even worse than that for Democrats. Everyone knows the public’s top issue is the economy. It has been since before Obama took office. So when the president and Democratic congressional leadership devoted a year to passing national health care, Republicans charged they were ignoring the public’s wishes. Now, when Democrats admit that Obamacare won’t cut costs or reduce deficits, they open themselves up to a more serious charge: they spent a year working on something that will actually cost jobs and make things worse.
The liberal interest group coalition’s recommendations speak volumes about the political and policy failures of the administration and the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership. And yet virtually all major media players are silent on the admission.
…(read more)…
DEATH PANELS-A Repost With Glenn Beck Video Added
I originally posted on this on July 26th of this year. Glenn Beck just mentioned the story:
See also this relevant story, “Paying for Programs,” where I quote Margaret Thatcher who said:
- “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend].”
Actually this is the second shot, the first involved the kids (Egalitarianism Doing the Opposite of What It Sets Out To Do), but this snowball will get bigger and bigger as time goes on.
ObamaCare: The Rationing Begins in Earnest
This is the first shot in the health care revolution.
On Thursday the Food and Drug Administration will try to take the anti-cancer drug Avastin “off-label.” Avastin is a Stage 4 drug used to battle breast cancer. Avastin is not a cure but has been shown to stop the growth of cancer for an average of five months — meaning some late stage breast cancer victims live beyond five months.
But late stage breast cancer patients do not fit into the cost-benefit analysis of the Obama Administration. We told America rationing would happen if the health care takeover bill passed and Thursday women with breast cancer will be its first victims.
Avastin is the first medicine to fight cancer by blocking the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. While Avastin is expensive and may not be the miracle drug some anticipated for breast cancer (it is for other types of cancer) from the success of the early trials, the overwhelming majority of breast cancer specialists believe the drug can be effective and useful in certain patients….
….Dr. Richard Pazdur is the FDA’s Cancer Czar. Pazdur decides which anti-cancer drugs patients can have access to. In the case of Avastin, Pazdur changed the criteria to a new very subjective and slippery standard of “clinically meaningful.” And apparently the FDA and Pazdur don’t believe that extending the life of a Breast Cancer victim by 3 to 5 months or more is “Clinically Meaningful.”
How do you put a price tag on those precious months for the families who are living through the hell of losing a Mother, Sister, Daughter, Aunt or Wife? Taking Avastin off label is nothing more then government rationing of healthcare. Period….
…(read more)…
Paying for Programs
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money [to spend].”
A quote attributed to Margaret Thatcher
HotAir notes that Michelle Obama’s pet project is being funded by money already allocated for food stamps:
When Democrats paid for their EduJobs bill last week by taking money out of the food stamp program, the media barely noticed it. Undoubtedly that has created an incentive for Democrats and the Obama administration to steal from the poor once again. This time, they will pull $8 billion already allocated to food stamps and other aid in order to fund Michelle Obama’s pet project, the anti-child-obesity bill:
Democrats who reluctantly slashed a food stamp program to fund a state aid bill may have to do so again to pay for a top priority of first lady Michelle Obama.
The House will soon consider an $8 billion child nutrition bill that’s at the center of the first lady’s “Let’s Move” initiative. Before leaving for the summer recess, the Senate passed a smaller version of the legislation that is paid for by trimming the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.
The proposed cuts would come on top of a 13.6 percent food stamp reduction in the $26 billion Medicaid and education state funding bill that President Obama signed this week.
Food stamps have made multiple appearances on the fiscal chopping block because Democrats have few other places to turn to offset the cost of legislation.
…(read more)…
I wonder if the Democrats will count Michelle’s program a success when reports come back that obesity is down. More specificly, down 8-billion dollars because the kids went to bed hungry? I have my own thoughts on the program, but using progressive Democratic thinking on the matter (these programs are for the poor), where does this lead? Could you imagine if Bush did this? Oh wwhat a firestorm! CS Lewis was erudite enough to pen:
“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.” (C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock, p. 292.)
Obama-Care (or major platforms of it) Rejected in Missouri-Headed for the Courts I Am Sure
Missourins’ say NO to Obama… our fist is now Consti-tutionally held high!
Drudge Props:
ST. LOUIS • Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.
“The citizens of the Show-Me State don’t want Washington involved in their health care decisions,” said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.
With most of the vote counted, Proposition C was winning by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1. The measure, which seeks to exempt Missouri from the insurance mandate in the new health care law, includes a provision that would change how insurance companies that go out of business in Missouri liquidate their assets.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cunningham said at a campaign gathering at a private home in Town and Country. “Citizens wanted their voices to be heard.”
…(read more)…
…About 71 percent of Missouri voters backed a ballot measure, Proposition C, that would prohibit the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for not having it.
The Missouri law conflicts with a federal requirement that most people have health insurance or face penalties starting in 2014.
Tuesday’s vote was seen as largely symbolic because federal law generally trumps state law. But it was also seen as a sign of growing voter disillusionment with federal policies and a show of strength by conservatives and the tea party movement.
“To us, it symbolized everything,” said Annette Read, a tea party participant from suburban St. Louis who quit her online retail job to lead a yearlong campaign for the Missouri ballot measure. “The entire frustration in the country … how our government has misspent, how they haven’t listened to the people, this measure in general encompassed all of that.”
Missouri’s ballot also featured primaries for U.S. Senate, Congress and numerous state legislative seats. But at many polling places, voters said they were most passionate about the health insurance referendum.
“I believe that the general public has been duped about the benefits of the health care proposal,” said Mike Sampson of Jefferson City, an independent emergency management contractor, who voted for the proposition. “My guess is federal law will in fact supersede state law, but we need to send a message to the folks in Washington, D.C., that people in the hinterlands are not happy.”…
…(and here)…
Let the Rationing Begin
Actually this is the second shot, the first involved the kids (Egalitarianism Doing the Opposite of What It Sets Out To Do), but this snowball will get bigger and bigger as time goes on.
ObamaCare: The Rationing Begins in Earnest
This is the first shot in the health care revolution.
On Thursday the Food and Drug Administration will try to take the anti-cancer drug Avastin “off-label.” Avastin is a Stage 4 drug used to battle breast cancer. Avastin is not a cure but has been shown to stop the growth of cancer for an average of five months — meaning some late stage breast cancer victims live beyond five months.
But late stage breast cancer patients do not fit into the cost-benefit analysis of the Obama Administration. We told America rationing would happen if the health care takeover bill passed and Thursday women with breast cancer will be its first victims.
Avastin is the first medicine to fight cancer by blocking the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. While Avastin is expensive and may not be the miracle drug some anticipated for breast cancer (it is for other types of cancer) from the success of the early trials, the overwhelming majority of breast cancer specialists believe the drug can be effective and useful in certain patients….
….Dr. Richard Pazdur is the FDA’s Cancer Czar. Pazdur decides which anti-cancer drugs patients can have access to. In the case of Avastin, Pazdur changed the criteria to a new very subjective and slippery standard of “clinically meaningful.” And apparently the FDA and Pazdur don’t believe that extending the life of a Breast Cancer victim by 3 to 5 months or more is “Clinically Meaningful.”
How do you put a price tag on those precious months for the families who are living through the hell of losing a Mother, Sister, Daughter, Aunt or Wife? Taking Avastin off label is nothing more then government rationing of healthcare. Period….
…(read more)…
Egalitarianism Doing the Opposite of What It Sets Out To Do
HotAir has this story which is just another “told you so” in a long line of “I told you so’s”:
Barack Obama has been mighty keen on rolling out the most positive aspects of ObamaCare first in order to protect vulnerable Democrats facing voters angry over the bill’s passage. One of the big wins for Obama in the bill was the mandate for insurers to allow parents to carry their kids on policies until their 26th birthday. However, that intervention has created a rather perverse set of incentives that will see fewer children insured:
Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.
Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise. …
The major types of coverage for children — employer plans and government programs — are not be affected by the disruption. But a subset of policies — those that cover children as individuals — may run into problems. Even so, insurers are not canceling children’s coverage already issued, but refusing to write new policies.
…(read more)…
Leaked Treasury Docs Reveal Health-Care Grab
NEWSBUSTERS has an excellent article on what the press ignored and what economists and other pundits and personalities said would happen. Businesses will drop their health coverage automatically or by coercion. (See the PDF at CATO INSTITUTE)
Earlier this year, in his “Can we lose health coverage? Yes we can” column, syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock made a point asserted in dozens if not hundreds of columns and reports during the hide-and-seek legistlative process that ultimately led to the passage of what is commonly known as ObamaCare: The President’s core promise relating to the statist health care legislation that ultimately became law in March — namely that “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what” — could not and would not be kept.In that column, Murdock quoted Cato Institute analyst Michael Cannon as follows:
“Obama’s definition of ‘meaningful’ coverage could eliminate the health plans that now cover as many as half of the 159 million Americans with employer-sponsored insurance, plus more than half of the roughly 18 million Americans in the individual market. … This could compel close to 90 million Americans to switch to more comprehensive health plans with higher premiums, whether they value the added coverage or not.”
In a late Friday afternoon blog post followed by a fuller early evening report, David Hogberg and Sean Higgins at Investors Business Daily confirmed that Obama’s never-credible core promise is on the brink of being shattered, and that the employer-related calculations by Cato’s Cannon were essentially correct (see graphic illustration by IBD above ):
Internal administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare.
Small firms will be even likelier to lose existing plans.
The “midrange estimate is that 66% of small employer plans and 45% of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfathered status by the end of 2013,” according to the document.
In the worst-case scenario, 69% of employers — 80% of smaller firms — would lose that status, exposing them to far more provisions under the new health law.
…. The 83-page document, a joint project of the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the IRS, examines the effects that ObamaCare’s regulations would have on existing, or “grandfathered,” employer-based health care plans.
Draft copies of the document were reportedly leaked to House Republicans during the week and began circulating Friday morning. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., posted it on his Web site Friday afternoon.
… In a statement, Posey said the document showed that the arguments in favor of ObamaCare were a “bait and switch.”
… (A White House) source conceded: “It is difficult to predict how plans and employers will behave in the coming years, but if plans make changes that negatively impact consumers, then they will lose their grandfather status.”
… In total, 66% of small businesses and 47% of large businesses made a change in their health care plans last year that would have forfeited their grandfathered status.
….The Associated Press has noticed the story too, but with the weakest of headlines: “Health overhaul to force changes in employer plans.” The content isn’t much better. Earth to AP reporter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar: ObamaCare, as predicted by so many during the previous year by experts most of the establishment press willfully ignored, will cause many employers to drop their insurance entirely.
…(read more)…
Do the American people know what they are in for? Probably not, as they vote people in during primaries like ALVIN GREENE.
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