Michele Bachmann continues to fight for us and against Obamacare, and her exhaustion is starting to show. If you have not sent off a thank you card to Michele, WHY NOT?
Barack Obama is about to take over 50% of the American economy with the Slaughter Solution. There are so many items in this POS bill that are just plain wrong, but the IRS becoming the enforcer of Obamacare at a cost of $10 Billion and 17,000 new employees is just more sh** sliding downhill. Think about all those benefits those new government employees are going to collect on a bankrupt system while we will be fined and/or jailed for an un-Constitutional mandate. Does not seem very much like the America we grew up in, does it?
I strongly recommend that you listen to the entire speech.
President Obama’s second cousin will speak at a Tea Party rally opposing healthcare reform tomorrow, organizers announced today.
Dr. Milton Wolf, a radiologist from Kansas, published an op-ed last week decrying “Obamacare,” and will join a slough of conservative lawmakers and activists on Capitol Hill tomorrow to rally against the legislation.
Joining wolf will be Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Tom Price (R-Ga.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), and actor Jon Voight.
The rally is part of a larger “Take the Town Halls to Washington” project.
“Primum nil nocere.”First, do no harm. This guiding principle is a bedrock of medical care. Sadly, those politicians who would rewrite our health care laws do not live in the same universe as do the doctors and health care professionals who must practice it.
Imagine if, like physicians, politicians were personally held to the incredibly high level of scrutiny that includes civil and financial liability for any unintended consequence of their decisions. Imagine if they were forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year on malpractice insurance and still faced the threat of multimillion-dollar lawsuits with every single decision they made. If so, a government takeover of health care would be the furthest thing from their minds.
Obamacare proponents would have us believe that we will add 30 million patients to the system without adding providers, we will see no decline in the quality of care for the millions of Americans currently happy with the system, and -if you act now!- we will save money in the process. But why stop there? Why not promise it will no longer rain on weekends and every day will be a great hair day?
America has the finest health care delivery system in the world. Let’s not forget that and put it at risk in the name of reform. Desperate souls across the globe flock to our shores and cross our borders every day to seek our care. Why? Our system provides cures while the government-run systems from which they flee do not. Compare Europe’s common cancer mortality rates to America’s: breast cancer – 52 percent higher in Germany and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom; prostate cancer – a staggering 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway; colon cancer – 40 percent higher in the United Kingdom.
Look closer at the United Kingdom. Britain’s higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States. But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom’s, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year. This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan. And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes. Whatever we do, let us not surrender the great gains we have made. First, do no harm. Lives are at stake.
Obamacare: Fixing price at any cost
The justification for Obamacare has been to control costs, but the problem is there is little in Obamacare that will do that. Instead, there are provisions that will ration care and artificially set price. This is a confusion of costs and price.
As one example, consider the implications of Obamacare’s financial penalty aimed at your doctor if he seeks the expert care he has determined you need. If your doctor is in the top 10 percent of primary care physicians who refer patients to specialists most frequently – no matter how valid the reasons – he will face a 5 percent penalty on all their Medicare reimbursements for the entire year. This scheme is specifically designed to deny you the chance to see a specialist. Each year, the insidious nature of that arbitrary 10 percent rule will make things even worse as 100 percent of doctors try to stay off that list. Many doctors will try to avoid the sickest patients, and others will simply refuse to accept Medicare. Already, 42 percent of doctors have chosen that route, and it will get worse. Your mother’s shiny government-issued Medicare health card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.
Obamacare will further diminish access to health care by lowering reimbursements for medical care without regard to the costs of that care. Price controls have failed spectacularly wherever they’ve been tried. They have turned neighborhoods into slums and have caused supply chains to dry up when producers can no longer profit from providing their goods. Remember the Carter-era gas lines? Medical care is not immune from this economic reality. We cannot hope that our best and brightest will pursue a career in medicine, setting aside years of their lives – for me, 13 years of school and training – to enter a field that might not even pay for the student loans it took to get there.
Giving power back to people
I believe there is a better way. The problems in the American health care system are not caused by a shortage of government intrusion. They will not be solved by more government intrusion. In fact, our current problems were precisely, though unintentionally, created by government.
Are you freakin’ kidding me? While the District of Criminals has us laser focused on the healthcare takeover and illegal alien amnesty, Ben Bernanke would like to eliminate the minimum reserve requirements because they are a profit drag. Was there or WAS THERE NOT a stress test last year to see if banks had enough reserves to fend off the commercial real estate bubble (my theory for the test)?
Just one more reason that the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel and their mafia boss, Bernanke, have got to go!
In the footnotes of a speech U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke would have given to the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 10, lies a unique and startling disclosure.
Hosted on the Federal Reserve’s own servers, the written testimony of the bank’s chairman explains in plain text what expanding the Fed’s powers will do.
“The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system,” footnote number nine, at the bottom of the page, explains without additional qualification.
9. The authority to pay interest on reserves is likely to be an important component of the future operating framework for monetary policy. For example, one approach is for the Federal Reserve to bracket its target for the federal funds rate with the discount rate above and the interest rate on excess reserves below. Under this so-called corridor system, the ability of banks to borrow at the discount rate would tend to limit upward spikes in the federal funds rate, and the ability of banks to earn interest at the excess reserves rate would tend to contain downward movements. Other approaches are also possible. Given the very high level of reserve balances currently in the banking system, the Federal Reserve has ample time to consider the best long-run framework for policy implementation. The Federal Reserve believes it is possible that, ultimately, its operating framework will allow the elimination of minimum reserve requirements, which impose costs and distortions on the banking system. (emphasis mine)
Anybody who has a couple of little grey cells speaking to each other amicably will know that Obamacare (as written now) is just the beginning of a universal, single payer, healthcare system that will bankrupt the nation. Bahana C. Obama states it himself, (and so does Nancy; “Kick open that door, and there will be other legislation to follow,” she said. “We’ll take the country in a new direction.”).
Caterpillar and Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill give us a peek at what the true cost of Obamacare will spiral toward.
Dow Jones Newswires | Caterpillar Inc. said the health-care overhaul legislation being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would increase the company’s health-care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.
In a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan “because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees.”
Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it’s particularly opposed to provisions in the bill that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage. The legislation would require nearly all companies to provide health insurance for their employees or face large fines.
The Peoria-based company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at least 20 percent, or more than $100 million, just in the first year of the health-care overhaul program.
“We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors,” said the letter signed by Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar. “We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we’ve raised throughout the year.”
Business executives have long complained that the options offered for covering 32 million uninsured Americans would result in higher insurance costs for those employers that already provide coverage. Opponents have stepped up their attacks in recent days as the House moves closer toward a vote on the Senate version of the health-care legislation.
A letter Thursday to President Barack Obama and members of Congress signed by more than 130 economists predicted the legislation would discourage companies from hiring more workers and would cause reduced hours and wages for those already employed.
Caterpillar noted that the company supports efforts to increase the quality and the value of health care for patients as well as lower costs for employer-sponsored insurance coverage.
“Unfortunately, neither the current legislation in the House and Senate, nor the president’s proposal, meets these goals,” the letter said.
What do you think is going to happen to what is left of America’s small businesses? The mandated insurance that Hawaii companies are required to offer is what caused my and my spousal unit’s layoffs. I wonder how that experiment will work with the rest of the country?
The Massachusetts treasurer said Tuesday that Congress will “threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years” if it adopts a health care overhaul modeled after the Bay State’s.
Treasurer Timothy Cahill — a former Democrat running as an independent for governor — said the 2006 law has succeeded only because of huge subsidies and favorable regulatory changes from the federal government.
“Who, exactly, is going to bail out the federal government if this plan goes national?” He asked.
Cahill made his remarks after Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, accused him and Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker of being silent amid the ongoing health care debates.
Cahill said he’s called for the state to abandon its plan, and for the federal government not to match it.
“If President (Barack) Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform adopted here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” the treasurer said.
I have actually lost count of the number of billboards that have been paid for with real money and put up all over the country protesting the Whiner-In-Chief (etc.).
Here is the next one in the list of many more to come.
(Editor’s Note: If this doesn’t make your face hurt, check out because you must be dead. H/T BB.)
Tucson drivers were honking like crazy outside Gabby Giffords’ office at Swan and Pima, trying to tell the wayward congresswoman that the people of Tucson are NOT in favor of Washington’s corrupt takeover of our health care.
Get ready for this; either turn up the volume or turn it down. Remember, this video is a perfect example of the mighty, Republican paid for, astro-turf campaign against Bambi Obama. This has nothing to do with healthcare, corrupt politicians, or un-Constitutional laws – we just want to see him fail. (snark for those mental midgets out there.)
And now for the real astroturfer: Annabel Park:
And for the little party that Annabel has started. Chicago Coffee Party, March 13th, 2010 – Kickoff Day:
Let’s REVIEW, shall we? Coffee Party:
Coffee Party, 3.13.2010, Bethlehem, PA (20+, BIG Coffee Party)
Tea Party:
9.12.09, Washington, DC - 2.1 Million(?)
If these non-representative, government officials want to be so stupid as to pass this bill, then allow them to do so and see what happens next.
