Orszag: Obamacare Rationing is "Automatic"

#hhrs #ucot #rs #sgp #handsoff
Ed Morrissey: "ObamaCare is a rationing system, and the IPAB will be one of the key drivers for that rationing. If you don’t believe me, just listen to Orszag."



The truth comes out....shocking...

Profiles in Senatorial Courage

So what did the Senate Dems vote against today?

1) 57 Dems voted to NOT "reduce the cost of providing federally funded prescription drugs by eliminating fraudulent payments and prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists..." Only two Dems voted Yes...Bayh and Nelson [NE].

2) 58 Dems voted to NOT allow "States to opt out of a Federal health care takeover." This time Nelson was the only holdout. I guess we know who can see the writing on the wall....

3) 56 Dems voted to NOT "prevent Medicare from being used for new entitlements and to use Medicare savings to save Medicare." Nelson & Webb voted for, Byrd did not vote.

4) 54 Dems voted to NOT "eliminate the sweetheart deals for Tennessee, Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana, Connecticut, and frontier States." Nelson & Bayh voted for, Byrd & Begich did not vote.

5) 57 Dems voted to NOT "ensure that Americans can keep the coverage they have by keeping premiums affordable." Bayh voted for, Kaufman did not vote.

6) 56 Dems voted to NOT "make sure the President, Cabinet Members, all White House Senior staff and Congressional Committee and Leadership Staff are purchasing health insurance through the health insurance exchanges established by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Bayh, Nelson and Lincoln voted for.

7) All 59 Dems voted to NOT "enroll Members of Congress in the Medicaid program."

8) 58 Dems voted to NOT "improve the [HCR] bill by waiving the $40,000 penalty on hiring previously unemployed individuals." Nelson voted for.

The GOP continues to offer Amendments to the HCR reconciliation, so there will be more where this came from....

UPDATE:

9) 55 Dems voted to NOT "ensure that no State experiences a net job loss as a result of the enactment of the SAFRA [Student Aid] Act." Bayh, and BOTH Nelsons voted for, Byrd was apparently asleep again.

UPDATE II:

10) 56 Dems voted to NOT "strike the medical device tax." Bayh & Nelson voted for, Byrd, still napping.

11) 57 Dems voted to NOT "exclude pediatric devices for persons with disabilities from the medical device tax." Nelson for, Byrd snoring.

12) 54 Dems voted to NOT "protect access for America's wounded warriors." Not sue what that means exactly, but I am for it.

13) 54 Dems voted to NOT "protect the integrity of Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense health care programs for veterans, active-duty service members, their families, widows and widowers, and orphans who have sacrificed in defense of our Nation."

14) 54 Dems voted to NOT "repeal the sunset on marriage penalty relief and to make the election to deduct State and local sales taxes permanent." Of note 1 Republican voted agianst this as well. Somebody call Judd Gregg's office and slap him around!

15) Dems Voted to NOT "increase women's access to breast cancer screenings." [Number not known yet, as roll call not posted]

Note: I counted Lieberman and Sanders as the Dems they really are...are should be. No GOP members vote with the Dems on these, and Isakson did not vote on any.

Shock & Awe - Obamacare Style!

"Did I say it would 'save you $2500 a year'? Sorry, I meant 'cost you $2400 a year'. My bad. Ok, lets talk about immigration...." - President Obama*

That was quick: reports filtering in of health care premiums for families rising $2,400 annually in reaction to today's signing of Demcare bill...

I guess it is all the fault of the evil insurance companies taking advantage of people and gouging them.... But then again, they may need to get what they can while they can....

Rush Limbaugh had stacy, his secret insurance lady on the phone today, and she basically said that under the new rules that the insurance companies will probably go out of business in less than 2 years.

But $2400 really isn't a bad deal...I mean that is only $1 per page of the Obamacare bill....

*President Obama as portrayed by my imagination...

Amazon Sale I'd Like to See Right Now

Glenn Reynolds puts on a pretty regular public service whenever he posts:

"At Amazon, Markdowns on..."

The post that I would really like to see right now is:

"At Amazon, Markdowns on Tar & Feathers"

This is "Free" Health Care...

Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan for these great slides:





More of Ryan's slides here.

America, The Gulliver of Nations

Powerline posts a keen insight on how Great Britain's present, may become our future:

Once the federal government becomes so deeply involved in allocating health care, it will come to be a dominant focus of political discourse.

Over the years watching on C-Span the British Prime Minister's Question Time, I've observed that a large portion of this exercise is devoted to specific questions about the quality care provided by The National Health Service in members' districts. A question on the terrorists threats to the UK will invariably be followed by a passionate query from a Member asking the PM if he's aware of nurses being re-assigned at a hospital in Sheffield. The PM seems to spend as much time on parochial health care issues as on national security.

The politics of deciding who gets what in the way of medical treatment doubtlessly will push aside traditional affairs of state. Every member of Congress will need to hire several staff members just to manage constituents' complaints about their care. Elections will be won and lost on the basis of who can get the most in the way of health care for their districts.

We will become the Gulliver of nations, a great power whose leaders are tied up in strings as they spend much of their time addressing the medical complaints, valid and imagined, of their electorate.

We *will* become the Gulliver of nations. And it will not just be due to healthcare. The more our Federal government becomes so deeply involved in the regulation of anything and everything (education, the environment, banking, retirement, fishing, car manufacturing....etc), the more we tie ourselves down. The more the Liliputians UN bureaucrats will take advantage of us. The more we will make ourselves irrelevant.

Potemkin Village Healthcare

#hhrs #tcot #rs #sgp
All we need to know about the just posted House Obamacare bill:

The Democrats' 2,309-page reconciliation bill was released for public viewing Sunday and will begin the mark-up process in the Budget Committee Monday at 3pm. Contrary to the Democratic pledge to post the reconciliation measure 72 hours before consideration, the bill posted is a dummy -- or a "shell" as Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) put it -- an early version of the House bill that cleared key committees in 2009, thus making it eligible for the reconciliation process under budget rules. Once that bill clears the the committee it will be gutted and replaced with the closed-door "fixes" agreed upon by Congressional Democrats, and appended with an unrelated student loan bill.

It is nothing but a Potemkin Village, set out to fool people, or better yet distract us from the real goings-on. The funny thing is, even with this previous version of the bill that was sitting around, they couldn't see fit to post it 72 prior to consideration.

The contempt for their constituents is palpable....

"Zero" Hour

It looks like Crazy Aunt Nancy will try to ram 'health care reform' through 'one way or another'.

"Let's remove all doubt, we will have health care — one way or another," Pelosi said. "Back to the drawing board means a great big zero for the American people."

First, I would like to remind Ms. Pelosi that we already have health care....

Second, if by 'zero' you mean keeping the outstanding, though slightly pricey, instant-access health care that we already enjoy...then I will take that over government supervised, spirit-crushing bureaucracy that you prescribe any time.

And so will a majority of voters in this country....

Opposition = Transparency?

In my previous post, I poked fun at Nancy Pelosi's absurd statement "There has never been a more open process for any legislation" in the drafting of the Healthcare Refrom bills.

What is extremely interesting is that both she and Rep Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) point out in this video that transparency has occurred in part because "...tens of thousands of people participated in our Town Meetings..."

Yes, tens of thousands of people participated, and tens of thousands of those participants told you that they wanted nothing to do with this push towards socialized medicine. Many of those tens of thousands went to the Town Meetings because there had been no transparency.

Yet they still push forward....

It really tells you what their agenda is when they tout the opposition of a majority of the country to what they are doing as transparency, but they are willing to ignore that majority to impose their desire of government controlled health care upon us.

Nancy Pelosi Channels Baghdad Bob

Nancy and Bob....separated at birth??


"They're not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion ... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion." [2003]


"There has never been a more open process for any legislation," Pelosi said at a press conference concerning Healthcare Reform [2010]

Pelosi-Care Holiday Anthem

Pelosi-Care
(to the tune of "Tannenbaum")

Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
It makes our health plans equal.
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
I see a Commie sequel.

The current plan is just a start:
She'll take our freedoms all apart.
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
Her chutzpah knows no equal.

Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
With Harry Reid's assistance,
Pelosi-care, Pelosi-care,
Will overcome resistance:

Oh, single payer's on its way!
The ghost of Marx will shout hurray!
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
You'll buy at her insistence.

Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
The public is affrighted.
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
Obama grins, delighted:

His leftist envy's proven pure;
His legacy is now secure!
Pelosi-care! Pelosi-care!
Some wrongs cannot be righted.

--Tom Riley

That Bizarre Filibuster Thingy

Much like the sudden disappearance of the "No Blood For Oil" liberal objection to the ongoing war, we have also seen the sudden disappearance of the liberal's love affair with the filibuster.

E.J. Dionne as quoted in The Corner:

Of course what has happened on the health-care bill is enraging. It's quite clear that substantial majorities in both houses of Congress favored either a public option or a Medicare buy-in.

In a normal democracy, such majorities would work their will, a law would pass, and champagne corks would pop. But everyone must get it through their heads that thanks to the bizarre habits of the Senate, we are no longer a normal democracy.

Because of a front of Republican obstruction and the ludicrous idea that all legislation requires a supermajority of 60 votes, power has passed from the majority to tiny minorities, sometimes minorities of one.

I am not sure why this is a problem for Dionne, given that the Dems have apparently secured their needed 60 votes. But it is the process by which the Dems got those 60 votes that screams for the need of an official form of 'obstructionism'.

It is telling though that Dionne would consider Harry Reid dispensing billions of dollars, graft, and favoritism in back-room deals to be "normal democracy". Oh the horror that the GOP might consider using approved parliamentary tactic to try and counter-act this blatant Christmas shopping spree for votes.

But the best part of course is that Dionne used to loooove the filibuster when it was used to oppose the evil W. Leave to an astute WaPo reader to point this out....

E.J. Dionne Jr. ["Democratic fratricide," op-ed, Dec. 17] views the Senate as a "dysfunctional and undemocratic partisan hothouse," presumably because of the ability of 41 senators to prevent a bill from coming to a final vote.

Mr. Dionne has not always taken such a dim view of undemocratic procedures, however.

In 2003, he heartily approved of Democratic obstruction of two judicial nominations by President Bush: "The filibuster is the only way to prevent the president from creating a federal judiciary dominated by ideologues of his own persuasion, appointed to satisfy his political base" ["Order and the Courts," op-ed, May 9].

If a filibuster was justified merely to keep two conservatives off the bench, why should it not be used by senators who believe that the health-care bill would be a disaster for the country?

Richard L. Lobb, Fairfax

Kudos to Mr. Lobb, and the WaPo for actually running the letter.

A pox on Dionne for being a transparent, partisan hack. At least there is some transparency in Washington nowadays....

The Sticky Mess That is Obamacare

Instapundit quotes Ann Althouse:

“People just don’t want this bill. I think the big mistake was skipping the step of winning public support for a particular plan. It wasn’t enough that people believed there was a problem. People needed to believe the solution wasn’t worse than the problem. We were supposed to look away and trust them. The trust was never won, never earned. It’s been a horrific mess, and it just looks messier and messier as time wears on. Obama kept his distance, which looks pretty smart now.”

Two thoughts on this....

1) The main problem that has doomed Obamacare is that the American people have a general historic distrust of what comes out of Congress. If the people had a positive, or even neutral, opinion of our Congresscritters, then Obama may well have been able to sign a healthcare reform bill by now. But the fact that the effort was so closely associated with Congress and not the highly popular new president probably spelled its doom. Since 'Obama kept his distance', and every pronouncement came out of preening camera-hogs in the Capital rotunda, its was obvious who was making the sausage. The One should have expended his own newly bestowed political capital to push the bill over the goal line, but he left it to those people that all polls show that America distrusts.

2) At the same time, keeping his distance did not work for Obama. The simple fact that the term 'Obamacare' is synonymous with the effort to cede the government control of everyone's healthcare, shows that his attempts to remain above the fray failed. While he did avoid being seen as working the details in the trenches, it was clear from the White House that healthcare reform was considered one of Obama's 'legacy issues'. Thus it is clear to most American's that while Congress is making the sausage, it was the White House that is running the Red Hot cart on the corner, selling the product to the public at large....

I think Ann is wrong. Obama does not escape the mess, and he does not look very smart...

Nurse Pelosi says Turn Your Head and Cough

Many good Americans, though less by the day it seems, ask "What's wrong with passing this health care reform? Especially if it will lower costs and give coverage to those without it."

But many more people have realized however that this "reform" is not about either cost nor coverage. For those that are pushing it, this is not about health care, but rather about "health control".

While the Democrats may spout their assigned talking points about how Obamacare will bring gumdrops and candy canes, they will rarely admit their real motivation despite the fact that everyone knows what it is. That admission would not help them sell this lemon of a used car.

Apparently someone forgot to tell this to one of Nancy Pelosi's staffers. The one in charge of her website's "Mythbuster" feature.

In response to the 'myth' that "Health insurance reform could be unconstitutional…or violate the 10th amendment", Pelosi's website (is that like saying Obama's teleprompter?) says:

"Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited."

That's right...one of the leaders of the Congress is happy to let you know that she has your health care by the balls. Now turn your head and cough!

So the next time some nice lefty tells you it is all about high costs and the uninsured, and that the government would never ration your health care, just remember that Nurse Ratched Nancy Pelosi wants you to know her power is unlimited when it comes that health care, and then remember this, this, and this.

Like I said...it isn't about health care, it is about health control....

[Hat Tip: Jonah Goldberg]

2009: The First Year of Global Governance

Mark Steyn distills our future succinctly:

"'Climate change' and 'health care' are different ends of the same stick: They're both all-purpose pretexts for regulating every aspect of your life..."

But to protest this is somehow dangerous....

Put Away Your Pink Ribbons

#tcot #hhrs #rs #sgp
The United States vastly outpaces the rest of the world in Breast Cancer survival for one simple reason....screening.

Researchers discovered that it was because of breast cancer screenings that women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die from breast cancer. In Britain, it’s 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent; Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent.

However now a Health & Human Services panel recommends that women should reduce the number of mammograms that they get. What is the reasoning behind this recommendation? They cite "evidence that the potential harm to women having annual exams beginning at age 40 outweighs the benefit..."

One might argue that the numbers listed above would counter that line of reasoning.

And the intelligentsia cackled when some warned that socialized medicine Obamacare would lead to rationing with faceless bureaucrats deciding levels of treatment. Like, say, a cancer related recommendation from a panel that doesn't have one oncologist.

Of course the left will argue back that this is simply a recommendation, not law. But do we really think that when Obamacare is the law of the land that these bureaucratic pronouncements won't become policy for those who are stuck with government-run health care?

Not the Hope and Change I was expecting....

Tyranny of the Minority Majority

#hhrs #tcot #rs
Some prescient thoughts on the results of last night...

Jennifer Rubin:

If Pelosi gets her 218 votes, it will be unprecedented. It is fair to say that never will a piece of legislation this sweeping (and damaging) have been passed over the opposition of so much of the electorate and on the votes of such a narrow ideological slice of the governing class.

'A Senate Friend':

If the only thing bipartisan is the opposition, and a party with an overwhelming majority is scrambling to get it over the first hurdle, it sure says something about the bill.

I believe that this is what might be called the 'Tyranny of the Minority Majority'...

House Obamacare Bill Word Cloud

Below is the word cloud for the top 100 words that appear in the text of the House Health Care Bill:



Hmmmm...looks like Indians Native Americans get a lot of attention in this bill. And apparently, so will the secretarial pool....

Fear & Loathing on Healthcare

#tcot #hhrs
Steny Hoyer's Town Hall via Mark Hemingway over at The Corner:

"...when I arrived for the town hall being held by the congressman from Maryland's fifth district last night at a high school in Waldorf, I was two hours early, and the place already looked like Calcutta on Free Malaria Shot Day....[Hoyer's] speech was made up of such canned Democratic talking points that it would normally have been unremarkable, except that when you hear all the current Democratic health-care talking points assembled in one place, it's kind of hard not to notice how breathtakingly disingenuous they are."

But the best lines of the night came from Hoyer himself:

"After he repeatedly assured everyone that this bill was fiscally responsible, another questioner asked somewhat incredulously how this bill would save money. Hoyer responded, "I didn't say the bill would pay for itself, I said it would be paid for." The angry crowd didn't like that bit of sophistry one bit. And when another questioner asked how he could assure the bill's fiscal responsibility when Social Security and Medicare were bankrupt, Hoyer responded by saying, "Indeed, I don't know if they are going bankrupt . . ." and had to wait to continue because of the riotous laughter that ensued."

I would think that politicians should fear for their proposals, and perhaps their futures, when they are openly mocked by their constituents.

I think that may be my nomination for political line of the year.... "I didn't say the bill would pay for itself, I said it would be paid for." Now that is ballsy....

New England's Big Weekend

This looks like it could be quite a weekend in New England...

- According to these projections, Hurricane Danny could ruin the end to the First Family's posh vacation on the Vineyard. I wonder what the over/under will be for how long it will take the White House to blame it on Global Warming? Or perhaps paid for by those evil insurance companies?

- Depending on speed, said Hurricane could also put quite a fix on the planned Boston funeral ceremony for Senator Ted Kennedy.

- Interestingly, it seems that the new line of attack by the Dems will be to try and push through Obamacare quickly in order to honor Kennedy and cement his legacy. However last time I checked for a good deal of American's Kennedy's legacy is already cemented, and it is that of a punchline to many late-night TV jokes about womanizing, drunken behavior, or political elitism. And Mayor Quimby didn't just miraculously materialize on the pages of a script from 'The Simpsons'. Thus for the Dems to want to use him as a reason to convince Americans that this healthcare boondoggle needs to be completed immediately seems a little misguided.