Archive for the ‘Health Care Wars’ Category

Pelosi’s Victory Cackle — UP YOURS AMERICA!

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
Cackling Pelosi Victory Celebration

Gotta LUV these folks — they sure know how to party! I can’t say it any better than Ace:

That image just gets people where they live. It’s not an intellectual thing — it’s just an emotional reaction to someone who just f**ked you over and then cavorts joyously about it on television, dancing on your grave.

President Obama signed the bill today.

13 states immediately filed suit against it!

The attorneys general of 13 states immediately filed lawsuits against the pro-abortion health care bill President Barack Obama signed Tuesday morning. They include 12 Republicans and one Democrat, of Louisiana, and a Rasmussen poll finds Americans supportive of their actions.

Just seven minutes after Obama signed the measure into law, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum took the lead and filed the suit for his colleagues in court in Florida.

“The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage,” the lawsuit says, according to an AP report.

McCollum, who is pro-life, is joined by attorneys general from South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Michigan, Utah, Pennsylvania, Alabama, South Dakota, Idaho, Washington, Colorado and Louisiana.

Some states are looking at other ways of getting out of participating in the pro-abortion health care bill as Virginia and Idaho have passed legislation to do that.

And, how about our super-classy Vice President, Joe Biden, tellin’ ol’ Barry at the signing ceremony, “This is a Big F*#cking Deal”.

Here’s the hit list for the upcoming election cycle.

In November we’ll be showing these jokers in the House what a real “‘Big F*#cking Deal” looks like!

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Dems’ Healthcare Bill Will Pass — R.I.P. the Great American Experiment!

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Stupid StupakI was going to the Farmer’s Market when I heard Bart Stupak (MI-D) give his lame-ass little speech about how he held out his YES vote on principle and how this forced the almighty Obama to grant him his little lame-ass Executive Order that would state that the currently-in-effect Hyde Amendment’s anti-abortion provisions would apply to the Senate Healthcare Bill which Obama will sign into law tonight, or first thing tomorrow — depending upon how the voting procedures go. Stupak was holding a cadre of 5-6 other supposedly pro-life votes and those will now most definitely change from NO to YES. Nanny Nancy will be crowin’ and poppin’ champagne ’til dawn — the dawn of a very different America from the one that we will go to sleep in.

[Send ol' Bart a message -- here's his opponent's FaceBook page. Send the guy a few bucks, hell, a lot o' bucks if you can!] Allahpundit has a message for Stupak: Pence to Stupak: You traded 30 years of pro-life law for a promise from the most pro-abortion president in history. As Bugs would say, “What a maroon!”

First of all, anyone that takes this President’s word for ANYTHING is an idiot! Obama has changed his mind lied out his ass repeatedly since taking the oath of office. He’s thrown dozens under the bus — Stupak will be just one of plenty more. Odds makers in Vegas are probably working on the probability that Obama won’t sign the EO once he signs the bill into law. Even if he does, settled case law already precludes a Presidential signing statement from overriding actual legislative LAWS — The Executive implements, not legislates! Gee, didn’t any of these high-level guv’ment knot heads ever take Civics?

I’m not the only one pissed. Patterico is venting big time:

With Stupak & Co. selling our their principles for an unenforceable executive order, revocable at will, it’s clear that ObamaCare is going to pass. I have said it time and time again: this legislation fundamentally changes the relationship between the government and the people.

And it’s not likely to go away. Expansion of government is historically a one-way ratchet. We’re still stuck with the New Deal, and we will never be rid of the impossible burdens it has placed on our government in the form of entitlements we can’t afford. We’re still stuck with the “Great Society” — the fabled “welfare reform” of the Clinton era being nothing but a tiny Band-aid on a gushing, cavernous chest wound — and we’ll never be rid of the culture of listlessness and criminality it spawned.

In truth, the American experiment began to end during the New Deal era, when the Supreme Court ruled that people couldn’t grow their own crops on their own land for their own purposes if Congress said they couldn’t. This is just the logical end-point.

I started this post wanting to talk about how to reverse this, because obviously that has to be the goal. But I’m just not in the mood. Like you, I’m just too angry to think constructively.

With Happy Dependence Day Mark Stein gives us a glimpse of what’s comin’ down the ol’ pike:

Well, it seems to be in the bag now. I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers” in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.

If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It’s a huge transformative event in Americans’ view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Their bet is that it can’t be undone, and that over time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there’s plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada and elsewhere.

Stein goes on to elaborate on how the European countries have tried to deal with their ever rising social-program and entitlements costs — they have gut their militaries and are essentially powerless on the world stage. As China goes on to build a first-class blue-water navy, we’ll be dismantling ours. While Tehran gets and then stockpiles nuclear weapons, we’ll be decommissioning our own along with the forces that would have been charged with their care-taking and potential use.

As our national health care costs continue to rise — our status as the world’s only Superpower will evaporate — to the good of none and to the accent of evil over all.

Gotta go read Revelations again — this is all soundin’ a bit too familiar for comfort . . .

The Great Experiment that is America is being euthanized today by the party that believes in abortion and euthanization.

The constitutional democratic republic of the United States:
September 17, 1787 — March 21, 2010
R.I.P.

Long live the United States of America . . .

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If Obamacare Passes — Collapse of Healthcare to be “Massive and Rapid and Lethal and Complete”

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

American Healthcare -- R.I.P.
Below are some thoughts from a doctor about the inevitable consequences of the implementation of Obamacare left as a comment to a post by Deacon Greg Kandra.

We’ve had some fun here at Okie Manor with Photoshops of our President, all gloved up and ready to “give it to us real good”, as well as giving a call to arms for all of you, and me, to get off our lazy asses and participate in the democratic process, call/email those that claim to represent us and tell them to vote NO on this abomination of a bill. However, nowhere have I read a more reasoned, non-hyperbolic analysis of just what this legislation, if passed today, will do to our healthcare system. It sure ain’t pretty!

I have been a doctor for 19 years. 4 years in the Army and 15 years in private practice. I belong to a doctor owned group of approx 350 doctors in a multi-specialty practice. We employ 4000 people. In addition to being touted as one of the very best clinics in the nation (Acclaim Award winners) we have donated over a million dollars to the local city in grants, scholarships and charity. Regularly voted as top places to work by our employees. US healthcare at its very best. I am very proud of what we do and we provide tremendous care and value to our patients.

We seek to maintain a 3-5% profit margin annually. We operate in the very precarious business model of enormous volume, low margin. As any business owner knows, this is high-risk-low-margin of error model. Consequently any small changes to cash flow vectors, mandates widespread internal policy and practice corrections. Tiny changes = massive consequences.

As many people may know, Medicare and Medicaid, the current government paid ‘insurer’ – pays approximately 70% of the cost of care. ie its more expensive for doctors to care for these patients than we get reimbursed for. Say you are a contractor. Imagine the government mandating a significant number of your jobs whereby your out of pocket costs are ~ 30% + greater than your income. That is Medicare and Medicaid. In perspective, our group alone, year 2008 lost ~$12 million caring for our government patients. This is despite taking over 1 1/2 years to help move our fee-for-service traditional Medicare patients over to Medicare Advantage plans, which are privatized versions of Medicare that reimburse better…still not covering costs…but lessen our losses significantly.

Many people ask, why do private health insurance premiums continue to escalate? The liberals want you to believe its a combination of profiteering and waste. When in fact its due mainly to two other processes. The first is obvious: every year it costs more to care for patients and premiums are trying to keep up with this rising cost. But secondly, and less often discussed, is that every year private delivery systems lose more and more money caring for our government patients. Someone has to make up for these losses in order for your hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, pharmacies, group practices to remain solvent and profitable. Every year these delivery systems open their books to the private healthcare insurers – and the insurers must – they must in order for the entire system at large to stay functional, increase the amount they pay out to cover these losses. If they dont, both the delivery systems and the insurers die. So to keep the boat afloat, the payouts by private insurers MUST increase to subsidize the ever increasing losses doctors incur by taking care of our government patients. So, in a way, you could say that your increasing premiums are a tax that you are paying to cover the losses that are Medicare and Medicaid. It’s a clear and inarguable private subsidization of government cost. Enough said on that.

So to really feel the consequence and full impact of Obamacare, one must simply see the economic dominoes. Most people can see how this bill will rapidly reduce private insurance plans and rapidly expand government plan patients. And take whatever number that is being reported, and multiply that by 3. That has been the experience in both Mass and Hawaii. Both government plans were overwhelmed with the enrollees as they significantly underestimated the government migration.

Ok, so now- how can anyone not see the obvious outcome? Government patients = significant loss of profitability. Initally the private insurers will do their best to continue to subsidize this loss, and there will be a huge escalation of premiums. But within a few months this will be unsustainable. Its a cycle that cannot be stopped. Higher premiums = higher recidivism to government plans = higher premiums etc. Within months, every single hospital, every single doctor office, clinic, nursing home, pharmacy – every delivery system reliant on private insurers will no longer be profitable. ie they will go bankrupt. These will most certainly be the headlines to come: Hospital XYZ shockingly announces bankruptcy; Hospitals can no longer remain open; Clinics across the country file for bankruptcy; Loss of Pharmacy access shocks the Nation; Doctors going bankrupt en masse creating healthcare delivery and access to care crises; Where can you go to get care?; Loss of access reported Nationwide

Yes a crises. A crises of access due to widespread business failure. You will not be able to get care for as long as it takes for the government to devise their emergency bailout package and as long as it takes for those insufficient dollars to try and get those doors back open again. But it will be too late, and it will be too expensive. There is absolutely no way that our government can capitalize our entire healthcare system. Try as they might, only a percentage of what we have now will ultimately survive. And those that do survive will be a shell of what they once were. The conditions will be frightening, and the consequences will be dire. The degree of disarray will be unimaginable and the underlap in access to care will be gaping.

I will not expand this discussion to predict what this means to our economy at large because I am not an economist. But anyone can be close to predicting what I am suggesting. Factors such as loss of work hours due to illnesses not treated, pressure on all the other private business models; let alone the out and out loss of enormous capital via the bankruptcy of this entire healthcare industry can clearly be the death nail to our country and imo is a clear and present threat to our very sovereignty. This can make the housing collapse look like a speed bump. This will be massive and rapid and lethal and complete.

I am not certain why this very obvious outcome has not been openly discussed more often – ie the rapid and massive bankruptcy of all of your health care providers and their delivery systems. But this is the inevitable outcome should this bill ever become law and implemented.

Thanks for reading. Please ping, copy and email your friends and try and get this word out. I know it’s a very late hour – but I do think the implementation is not an inevitability as multiple lawsuits may keep it on hold for a while – so public opinion will still be vital for many more months to come.

Unbelievable times. Please do your part and email and make the phone calls. This plea comes an honest and heartfelt love of our country and its citizens, and an honest and heartfelt love of my profession, avocation and the welfare of my patients.

This [collapse of the U.S. Healthcare System] will be massive and rapid and lethal and complete.

The House votes in just a few hours — keep calling, keep emailing, keep praying . . .

Hat tip: The Anchoress

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Not Democrat, Not Republican, Not Independent — It’s called the “PISSED OFF PARTY” (or POP)!

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

My cousin Joe L. commented on my previous post’s link on FaceBook — I thought it was worth its own post. Take it away, cous . . .

Obamacare -- It's What's Good for ya!???

“Not Democrat, Not Republican, Not Independent — It’s called the “PISSED OFF PARTY” (or POP).

This party is dedicated to vote every incumbent out of office in the next elections.

If you’re Democrat, vote Democrat. Just don’t vote for the incumbent.

If you’re Republican, vote Republican.. Just don’t vote for the incumbent.

We need to send a message to all politicians, that we’re tired of their B.S.

If the country votes out all the incumbents, the new incoming politicians will get the message..

It’s pretty simple. Nobody needs to change parties and lets face it, there’s plenty of blame to spread around.

A few good politicians will lose their job but they probably have better retirement and insurance then 95% of the American public.

You’ve had to struggle for the last 5 years. Some of you have lost your job and may be working in some other sector just to feed your family.

I guarantee you, none of them will suffer like this country has.

If you like whats going on and think this is a bad idea, delete this.

But if you’re fed up and think this is a good idea, then pass this E-mail on.

To All 535 voting members of the Legislature; it is now official you are ALL corrupt morons:

a.. The U.S. Post Office was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.

b.. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.

c.. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.

d.. 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.

e.. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.

f.. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.

g.. 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?

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE NEED FOR GOOD HEALTH CARE, IT’S ABOUT TRUSTING THE GOVERNMENT TO RUN IT.

Well said . . . !!!!

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House Dems Jammin’ Down Senate Health Care Bill — Only More So!

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Kill the Health Care Bill!
       From IowntheWorld.com
Certainly not as photogenic as his co-party member in the House! Still, from the floor of the Senate today, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell warned:

“Americans are outraged at what’s going on here: a bill that aims to shift a major segment of our economy into the hands of the government, and which accomplishes that goal by imposing crushing burdens on already-struggling seniors, middle class families, and small businesses, is being rammed through Congress against the clear will of the public.

“No amount of spin will change the fact that Medicare will be deeply cut, insurance premiums and taxes will go up, the federal bureaucracy will grow, and as demand increases, the quality of care in this country will get worse and worse.

“Taking a bill that House Democrats are too embarrassed to vote on, adding more than $50 billion in new taxes and slashing $60 billion more from our seniors’ Medicare and keeping sweetheart deals may make some Washington Democrats ‘giddy,’ but it’s not reform.

“This bill isn’t an excuse to vote in favor of the Democrat plan for health care. It’s a reason to vote against it.

Nanny Nancy Pelosi and her trained congresscritters are wheeling/dealing/out-right-buying votes, even now getting some of the Stupak 12 anti-abortion members with a lame-ass promise from Senator Chucky Schumer that the Senate will pass a separate piece of legislation that will once again make federal funding of abortion illegal, which it is right now, but won’t be if/when the Obamessiah signs the Senate bill and it becomes the law-of-the-land.

If that happens, we can only hope that the Senate tells the House to piss off already on the Reconciliation bill, as that one is even worse! Hugh increase in taxes, and even larger (by $170 BILLION) cut in Medicare which would be almost seven-hundred-billion-dollars LESS to be spent on that program just at the time the Boomers hit their Medicare years — yeah, like that makes any sense whatsoever? On the provision for having an additional 15,000 IRS agents whose job will be to make sure ALL of us buy that guv’ment-approved Health Insurance Ed Morrissey at Hot Air asks:

Do we need the IRS checking on us every month to enforce the health-insurance mandate? Do Americans think hiring an additional 15,000 IRS agents to get even more involved in our lives is a great idea for reform?

Maybe this is what Nancy Pelosi meant when she called ObamaCare a “jobs bill” … it’s just another round of Democratic stimulus!

Obama is out on the stump trying to convince all of us that this is over and done. Same with Pelosi and the rest of the Dems — trying to demoralize the opposition — trying to get the on-the-fence House members to finally commit, or change their NO to YES. If they had the votes, they wouldn’t put out this much effort — But, they are CLOSE, too close. So it’s still important to eMail & call the last of the undecided/wafflers. Here’s the current list supplied by Hugh Hewitt:

Zack Space (OH-18)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-6265
1-866-910-7577

Harry Teague (NM-2)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-2365
Hobbs: (575) 393-0510
Las Cruces: (575)-522-3908

Michael McMahon (NY-13)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-3371
Staten Island: (718) 351-1062
Brooklyn: (718) 630-5277

Brian Baird (WA-3)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-3536
Olympia: (360) 352-9768

Marion Berry (Arkansas-1)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-4076
Jonesboro: (800) 866-2701

Stephen Lynch (MA-9)
D.C. Phone: 202-225-8273
Boston: 617-428-2000

Jerry McNerney (CA-11)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-1947
Pleasanton: (925) 737-0727

Jim Costa (CA-20)
D.C. Phone: 202-225-3341
Bakersfield: 661-869-1620
Fresno: 559-495-1620

Nick Rahall (W.VA-3) – Is now leaning ‘No’
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-3452
Huntington: (304) 522-6425

Jim Matheson (Utah-2)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-3011
South Salt Lake: (801) 486-1236
St. George: (435) 627-0880

Suzanne Kosmas (Fla-23)
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-2706
Orlando: (407)-208-1106
1-877-956-7627

Enough readin’ this ol’ Okie cracker — just get crackin’ on those eMails — and on callin’!!!!!

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Obamessiah Wants To Heal You With Obamacare — Are You Feelin’ Any Better Yet?

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
NYT Obama Cross

Two days ago the New York Times was featuring the above “illustration” of Obama as a Christ-figure in their week in review section article: As Health Vote Awaits, Future of a Presidency Waits, Too. It’s all gone down the NYT memory hole now, but I borrowed this screen capture from Ed Morrissey’s Hot Air piece where Ed writes:

In other words, will the Obama presidency become a political martyr for the progressive agenda? It’s not terribly difficult to discern the subtext, if it can even really be called that, from the Times’ article. What’s rather amazing is that the Paper of Record puts this in its news section rather than Opinion.

Next time, use a photograph. Leave the Nola Lopez “illustrations” for the cartoon section, unless the Times wants to leave the impression that its entire paper is a cartoon … a strategy that, in this case, would be considered a success.

And from CentristNet:

This is nothing new for the NYT, their Obamaphile journalists like Peter Baker and other establishment media, as the cheerleading of the Obama candidacy and then Presidency has been continuous and systemic since the inception of Obama’s campaign for President in 2007. As the clock counts down on perhaps the most important vote in Congress in decades, the House vote on Obamacare, we can expect to see even more frantic Obama worship by the establishment media in the attempt to convince the American public to support the unpopular bill. Centrist, independent and non-ideological Americans are left to wonder what establishment media coverage of the Obama Administration would look like if the narrative-setting giant NYT reported in an objective, as opposed to supportive, manner regarding the Obama Presidency.

Indeed — if there had been any kind of objective press during the campaign we’d have a President Hillary or President McCain . . . instead, we have President Obamessiah — cross, halo, feet of clay and all.

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