Democrats,  Republicans, EVERYONE ! !

To President  Obama and all 535 voting  members of the Legislature,

It is now  official you are ALL corrupt morons:  

    *   The U.S.  Post Service was established in 1775. You have  had 234
years to get it right and it is  broke. 
    *   Social  Security was established in 1935.  You have had 74 years to
get it right and it is  broke. 
    *   Fannie Mae  was established in 1938. You have had 71 years  to get
it right and it is broke. 
    *   War on  Poverty started in 1964. You  have had 45 years to get it
right; $1 trillion  of our money is confiscated each year  and transferred to
"the poor" and they only want  more. 
    *   Medicare  and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have  had 44
years to get it right and they are  broke. 
    *   Freddie  Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39  years to get
it right and it is broke. 
    *   The  Department of Energy was created in 1977 to  lessen our
dependence on foreign oil. It has  ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of 
$24 billion a year and we import more oil than  ever before. You had 32
years to get it right  and it is an abysmal failure.

You have  FAILED in every "government service" you have  shoved down our
throats while overspending our  tax dollars

AND YOU  WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED  WITH A
GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE  SYSTEM??

Half the Newly-Insured Under ObamaCare are Headed for Medicaid

Mar 22, 2010

by John Goodman

As she began a punishing regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, Mrs. Vliet found a measure of comfort in her monthly appointments with her primary care physician, Dr. Saed J. Sahouri, who had been monitoring her health for nearly two years.

She was devastated, therefore, when Dr. Sahouri informed her a few months later that he could no longer see her because, like a growing number of doctors, he had stopped taking patients with Medicaid.

Dr. Sahouri said that his reimbursements from Medicaid were so low — often no more than $25 per office visit — that he was losing money every time a patient walked in his exam room.

What People Outside the Beltway Think

ten of the changes needed to make ObamaCare acceptable.

What’s the purpose of the health summit — bringing the president and Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders together? The Republicans hoped it meant we would start over. Toss out the highly defective legislation that has been working its way through the House and Senate and begin anew with a clean slate.
The White House is rejecting that idea. Apparently, all they want is to ascertain the minimum changes they have to accept in order to get a bill passed.
Okay. Here are ten of the changes needed to make ObamaCare acceptable.

1. Establish Equality Under the Law. That means everyone should be treated equally. Specifically: Treat every Medicare enrollee the same. There should be no special subsidy for Medicare Advantage members in Florida, while millions of seniors are losing their coverage in other states.
   Treat every Medicaid enrollee the same. There should be no federal bailout of Nebraska’s Medicaid expansion, while other states are forced to pay their own way.
   Treat every taxpayer the same. There should be no tax on some workers, while exempting others because they happen to be longshoremen or members of other unions.
   
   
2. Drop Individual and Employer Mandates. Remember Barack Obama’s admonition to Hillary Clinton: We should not require people to buy something they cannot afford and then fine them when they don’t buy it. Further, we should not have one set of rules for carpenters, plumbers and bricklayers, while a more generous set of rules applies to employees of every other small business. Accordingly, we should: Replace the mandates with a fair and efficient system of economic incentives. We should provide generous financial support through the federal tax system to make health insurance affordable for every American.
   Give all insurance the same subsidy — regardless of where it is purchased. We should treat all insurance the same — whether it is provided through an employer, purchased in the marketplace or acquired in a health insurance exchange.
   Give every individual the same subsidy — regardless of how insurance is obtained. We should treat all individuals at the same income level the same — regardless of where they obtain their insurance. (See details in my commentary, “Level the Playing Field for U.S. Health Insurance.”)
   
   
3. Encourage Comprehensive Coverage for Seniors. We should encourage rather than discourage Medicare Advantage plans, which give seniors access to the type of broad comprehensive coverage most nonseniors have. We should encourage, rather than tax, employers’ supplemental Medicare benefits.
4. Allow Health Insurance to be Sold Across State Lines. We should encourage a national market for health insurance, allowing the citizens of each state access to the types of products routinely sold in the other 49 states. (See details in the NCPA Brief Analysis, “How to Create a Competitive Insurance Market.”)
5. Encourage Personal and Portable Insurance. We should end the current practice of barring employers from purchasing the type of insurance employees most want and need: insurance they own and can take with them as they go from job to job and in and out of the labor market. (See details in the NCPA Brief Analysis, “Personal and Portable Health Insurance.”)
6. Allow Private Insurance Alternatives to Medicaid and S-CHIP. Instead of trapping more children and more families in public health plans that all too often ration care by waiting, we should make those dollars available to subsidize private coverage which gives patients access to the full range of medical providers and facilities. (See details in the NCPA Policy Report, “Opportunities for State Medicaid Reform.”)
7. Allow Special Health Savings Accounts for the Chronically Ill. One of the most successful Medicaid pilot programs is Cash and Counseling, under which the homebound and disabled manage their own budget and are free to hire and fire those who provide them with services. We should use this experience as a model to liberate the chronically ill and empower them in a newly-competitive medical marketplace. (See details in a previous Health Alert on chronic illness and Health Savings Accounts.)
8. Allow Health Insurance Plans to Specialize in Solving the Problems of the Chronically Ill. Instead of requiring health plans to treat all enrollees as though they were the same, we should encourage special needs plans that specialize in treating the health problems of the chronically ill. (See details in a previous Health Alert on chronic illness and Health Savings Accounts.)
9. Allow Employers and Their Employees to Prefund Post-Retirement Health Care. Although one-third of baby boomer workers have an employer promise of post-retirement health care, almost none of these promises have been funded. We should allow employers to help their retirees obtain personally-owned, portable insurance for their retirees and to build up funds in order to keep their promises. (See details in a previous Health Alert, “What to Do About Early Retirees.”)
10. Enact Sensible Malpractice Reform. Encourage a health care system in which victims of unexpected adverse events are promptly compensated by episode-specific insurance and in which providers and facilities have economic incentives to reduce medical errors — without the need of lawyers, judges, jurors and courthouses. (See details in the chapter, “Five Steps to Liability by Contract,” from the NCPA’s Handbook on State Health Care Reform.)

Double-Count Medicare Savings

CBO: You Can’t Double-Count Medicare Savings

Dec 29, 2009

by John Goodman

Democrats in Congress are claiming that cuts in Medicare spending will both pay for health reform and add to Medicare’s long-term solvency. But a new CBO report says it’s either/or, but not both. [Of course, this also implies that the Medicare and Social Security trust funds are not holding anything of value — Congress has been double-counting there since the inception of those programs.] 

Five Steps to Rationing Health Care

by John Goodman

This is Scott Gottlieb on the Senate health bill:

Step One	The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services…will be given the authority to unilaterally write new rules on when medical devices and drugs can be used, and how they should be priced…when a cheaper medical option will suffice for a given problem and, in turn, when Medicare only has to pay for the least costly alternative.
Step Two	The Senate health-care bill also exempts Medicare’s actions from judicial review, taking away the right of patients to sue the government.

Step Three	Primary-care doctors who refer patients to specialists will face financial penalties under the plan. Doctors will see 5% of their Medicare pay cut when their “aggregated” use of resources is “at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization.”
Step Four	[The plan] imposes new costs on doctors who remain solo, mostly by increasing their overhead requirements [and] the plan offers doctors financial carrots if they give up their small practices and consolidate into larger medical groups, or become salaried employees of large institutions such as hospitals or “staff model” medical plans like Kaiser Permanente… The idea here is that Medicare can more easily apply its regulations to institutions that manage large groups of doctors than it can to individual physicians.
Step Five	The impact of these provisions won’t be confined to Medicare. Private insurance sold in the federally regulated “exchanges” will take cues from Medicare, since they’re both managed from the same bureaucracy.

Cash for Cloture

Dec 28, 2009

by John Goodman

This is adapted from a Dana Milbank column in The Washington Post:

The Louisiana Purchase: $100 million in extra Medicaid money for the Bayou State, requested by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

The Cornhusker Kickback:  $100 million in extra Medicaid money, this time for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).

U Con:  $100 million meant for a medical center in Connecticut for Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.)

Gator Aid: A grandfather clause will allow Floridians to preserve their pricey Medicare Advantage program from cuts imposed in the other states.

Handout Montana: Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) secured Medicare coverage for anybody exposed to asbestos — as long as they worked in a mine in Libby, Mont.

Iowa Pork: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) won more Medicare money for low-volume hospitals of the sort commonly found in Iowa.

Omaha Prime Cuts: Nebraska’s Nelson won a “carve out” provision that would reduce fees for Mutual of Omaha and other Nebraska insurers.

Dakota Payoff: Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, both North Dakota Democrats, will enjoy a provision bringing higher Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in “frontier counties” of states such as — let’s see here — North Dakota!

Hawaii Aloha: Hawaii, with two Democratic senators, will get richer payments to hospitals that treat many uninsured people.

Wolverine Bonanza: Michigan, home of two other Democrats, will earn higher Medicare payments and some reduced fees for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

What socialism means in Vermont:  Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) is getting larger Medicaid payments for his state (neighboring Massachusetts will get some, too).

show me the dollars

Where's our million's or billion's in gift money for Colo. after all we had two traitors errr I mean Senators vote for the Healthcare bill

Healthcare bill passes

Democrat version of the health bill passed the Senate. Jammed through and crammed through and down our throats. Not a single Republican vote. Paid off and threatened Senators the old fashioned Chicago way of Politics. When the American people find out about the shyster dealings of this bill they'll be so stupid as to try and blame the Republicans.

Ronald Reagan-A time of choosing

Reagan at his finest-27 minutes

National Recovery Act- 1934

This came out of the History column from todays local paper the Gazelle.
"Careful search of National Recovery Act codes reveals little of value
in them to any industry except those monopolistic
privileges which are incompatible with a capitalistic system based on
free enterprise and which ought never to have been granted unless it
were contemplated to make a transition from free competitive capitalism
to state capitalism."
Dr. Charles Roos, former director of research for the national recovery act.
Assailing the Recovery administration, minced no words in an almost
unqualified attack on the code system, Dr. Roos called the NRA "the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on industry or labor."

Reminds me of todays recovery "stimulus package"

the Louisiana Purchase.

Staffers on Capitol Hill were calling it the Louisiana Purchase.
On the eve of Saturday's showdown in the Senate over health-care reform, Democratic leaders still hadn't secured the support of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the 60 votes needed to keep the legislation alive. The wavering lawmaker was offered a sweetener: at least $100 million in extra federal money for her home state.
And so it came to pass that Landrieu walked onto the Senate floor midafternoon Saturday to announce her aye vote -- and to trumpet the financial "fix" she had arranged for Louisiana. "I am not going to be defensive," she declared. "And it's not a $100 million fix. It's a $300 million fix."

Read the rest of the article here

More on the Health Care bill

FYI | Sen. Coburn Weighs the Reid Bill: It’s 20.8 Pounds

Here are some additional findings by the numbers:
2,074 — pages in the bill
$1.2 billion — cost to taxpayers per page
70 — new government programs authorized by the bill
1,697 — times the Secretary of Health and Human Services is given authority to create, determine, or define things in the bill
24 million — people left without health insurance
$8 billion — taxes levied on uninsured individuals
$25 billion — additional Medicaid mandates placed on states
$28 billion — new taxes on employers not providing government-approved plans
$118 billion — cuts to Medicare Advantage
$465 billion — total cuts to Medicare
$494 billion — revenue from new taxes/fees levied on American families and businesses
$2.5 trillion — cost for the first ten years of full implementation of the legislation

Chaos and Organization in Health Care:

This is from a review by Joseph Rago of Chaos and Organization in Health Care:

Medicare recipients, on average, see seven doctors; patients with coronary artery disease see 10; those with lung cancer, 11. Usually these doctors don’t work together or even coordinate their care, resulting in errors, waste and a lower quality of treatment.

Quote of the Day

Oct 13, 2009
by John Goodman

I don’t believe that we can force vulnerable kids into private coverage. That’s what we’d be doing. They’d lose that special kind of defined benefit that comes under Medicaid…You cannot do that. They have requirements that you have to meet and can only be met through Medicaid, not in the exchange, where they’re at the mercy of people that will have them for lunch…

— Sen. Jay Rockefeller

Personally, I think Sen. Rockefeller’s health is also too important to be left to the private marketplace. Let’s enroll him in Medicaid.

America's Ten questions about Health Care reform

Quote of the Day

Sickness, poverty, and obesity are spun together in a dense web of reciprocal causality. Anyone who’s fat is more likely to be poor and sick. Anyone who’s poor is more likely to be fat and sick. And anyone who’s sick is more likely to be poor and fat.

       — Daniel Engber in Slate

Medicaid Numbers Don’t Add Up

FYI | Medicaid Numbers Don’t Add Up

Oct 2, 2009

by John Goodman

This is from a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Currently, the federal government pays about 57 cents out of every dollar the states spend on Medicaid, though the “matching rate” ranges as high as 76% in some states. That would rise to 95% [under the Baucus bill] —but only for five years. After that, who knows? It all depends on which budget Congress ends up ruining. Either the states will be slammed, or Washington will extend these extra payments into perpetuity—despite the fact that CBO expects purely federal spending on Medicaid to consume 5% of GDP by 2035 under current law.

Dems lied, transparency died

Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.
Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal. They also noted that their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting.
The Democrats noted that unlike other committees, the Finance Committee works off conceptual language that describes policies — instead of legislative language that ultimately becomes law, and which the GOP amendment would have required.
Democrats accepted an alternate amendment to make conceptual language available online before a vote.
Currently, the only version of Chairman Max Baucus’s proposal we have is a 223-page draft (PDF) that is written in plain English and explains the bill in conceptual terms. Republicans argued that until the bill is written in legislative language it will be impossible for the CBO to provide an accurate cost estimate.
The Bunning ammendment would have required the committee to have the legislative language of the bill, along with the CBO cost estimate, posted on the internet for 72 hours before a vote.
Democrats argued that waiting for the legislative languange to be written, and for the CBO to evaluate it, would needlessly delay the process by weeks.
“Let’s be honest about it, most people don’t read the legislative language,” Sen. John Kerry said.
The Bunning amendment was defeated by a 12 to 11 vote,
with Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln the only Democrat voting in favor.

Are you crazy? It is broke!!

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 - you have had 234 years to get it right; it is broke.
Social Security was established in 1935 - you have had 74 years to get it right; it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - you have had 71 years to get it right; it is broke.
The "War on Poverty" started in 1964 - you have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked and our entire country is broke.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - you've had 44 years to get it right; they are broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - you have had 39 years to get it right; it is broke.
Trillions of dollars were spent in the massive political payoffs called TARP, the "Stimulus", the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009... none show any signs of working, although ACORN appears to have found a new victim: the American taxpayer.
And finally, to set a new record:
"Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009! It took good dependable cars (that were the best some people could afford) and replaced them with high-priced and less-affordable cars, mostly Japanese. A good percentage of the profits went out of the country. And the American taxpayers take the hit for Congress' generosity in burning three billion more of our dollars on failed experiments.
So with a perfect 100% failure! rate and a record that proves that "services" you shove down our throats are failing faster and faster, you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a government-run health care system?

20% of our entire economy?

With all due respect,

Are you crazy?