So you wanted healthcare no matter what the cost
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi lied to the public when she promised to post the healthcare bill online for 72 hours prior to the vote. It is voted on tomorrow, and nobody really knows what it contains.
On September 24, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that she was “absolutely” committed to putting the text of the final House bill online for 72 hours before the House votes:
TWS: Madam Speaker, do you support the measure to put the final House bill online for 72 hours before it’s voted on at the very end?
PELOSI: Absolutely. Without question.
So much for transparency. On page 225—Section 330 – it does not require “Members of Congress to enroll in government-run health care”. In other words, what is good for the goose is certainly not good enough for the gander.
Jon Fleming from Louisiana has introduced a resolution HRes 615. You may have received emails regarding HR615. They are full of misinformation. HR615 was a bill from January 2009 requiring a bittering agent to be put in antifreeze.
HRes 615 is a resolution by Fleming, a doctor, requiring our representatives to use the same healthcare they foist upon an unsuspecting public. Did you know that for $500 a year- yes folks – A YEAR – our elected representatives get healthcare coverage for their entire families at a clinic on the grounds of the Capitol Building. No long lines int he waiting room, specialists at their beck and call.
Hey, that is a GREAT program – just offer that to all citizens and our healthcare crisis is solved! There, that didn’t take long, did it?
Until congress is FORCED to take their own medicine – pun intended – there will be NO solution to the crisis. Did you know that in one of the many bills (there are as many as five separate bills between the house and senate) congress is planning on rationing Medicare healthcare to seniors? This is important to me, because there is a small chance that I might survive to be a senior.
The Senate Finance Committee health bill released last week controls doctors by cutting their pay if they give older patients more care than the government deems appropriate. Section 3003(b) (p. 683) punishes doctors who land in the 90th percentile or above on what they provide for seniors on Medicare by withholding 5 percent of their compensation.
Instead of tackling fraud, such as the obscene reimbursements for the prolific scooters our congress is planning on limiting critical health care for your mother, your father, your grandparents… hey, they lived a long fruitful life and are no longer able to be milked to pay taxes, might as well place them on an ice float and push them out to sea!
If this is not an outrage to you, I have to question your humanity. Obama’s plan to limit health care expenditures for seniors is based on a Dartmouth study that claims that seniors that receive less health care have the same results as those that receive more. The hook? They only studied people that died.
President Obama and his budget director, Peter Orszag, have told seniors not to worry, claiming that Medicare spending could be cut by as much as 30 percent without doing harm. They cite the Dartmouth Atlas of Healthcare 2008, which tries to prove patients who get less care — fewer hospital days, doctors’ visits and imaging tests — have the same medical “outcomes” as patients who get more care. But read the fine print.
The Dartmouth authors arrived at their dubious conclusion by restricting their study to patients who died.
Well shit, if the outcome is death anyway, we may as well make an argument for Sarah Palin’s fabled “death squads”. What ever happened to having a control group comprised of, I don’t know, maybe people that survived?
So, my liberal friends, please excuse me if I continue doubting that we will see any real health care reform in our future. What is almost certain is mandatory health care insurance. Your freedom of choice is removed, because after all, we know that freedom of choice refers ONLY to abortions, and nothing else.
If you don’t have coverage, you will be forced to opt in to government health care, and pay for it. That language is in several of the pending bills already.
Friends have told me that it is only right to mandate health insurance. After all we have mandated auto insurance. But that is a failed example. If a person chooses not to drive, they are not forced to purchase insurance, which in New Jersey is often more than 10% of their annual income. And, driving is not a right. Last time I checked, living is a right!
If anyone has taken the time to read all 1992 pages, or 20 pounds of Pelosi’s version of the health care bill that Frank LoBiondo delivered to local libraries, please tell us what it says. According to LoBiondo”
“This is, some would argue, the biggest bill Congress will consider in maybe 100 years,” LoBiondo said. “And while we don’t know for sure, we are expecting there’ll only be about three hours of debate and probably one amendment. Maybe one substitute.”
LoBiondo said the bill would hurt New Jersey, even though the state and region have the kind of population the bill is meant to help.
“The $500 billion that is cut from Medicare hits the hospitals very hard,” he said. “And I’ve talked to all of our hospitals who would be devastated — and I don’t think that’s too strong a word — by the cuts that would be forced upon them.”
“Seniors, if you are on Medicare Advantage, you are wiped out. Seniors would be struggling with other cuts that would come from Medicare.”
Is the bill entirely bad? is LoBiondo just a partisan spoiler or political hack?
LoBiondo did praise some aspects of the proposed piece of legislature, including provisions that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for those with preexisting conditions, make preventative care more accessible and increase the number of primary care professionals.
Well, we are making headway. But, as I have said before, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.