Showing posts with label insurance plan. Show all posts

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Litmus Test

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Let's Just Start Over!!!

Boustany Delivers Republican Rebuttal

WASHINGTON � Slow down and start over. That was the message from top Capitol Hill Republicans in advance of President Barack Obama's address Wednesday night to Congress and the nation on health care.

As Obama seeks to jump start an ambitious health care overhaul despite sliding public opinion poll numbers, Republicans countered with a call for a slimmed-down measure containing a few popular elements such as making sure insurance companies don't deny coverage to people with pre-existing health problems.

"Our view is: Let's scale it back, target the problems and not have the government take over, in effect, all of American health care," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

The alternative GOP message seems to be, "Keep going, and we'll keep kicking your teeth in." For instance, though he's voted for Medicare cuts in the past, McConnell attacked the Medicare cost curbs in the Obama plan as "massive cuts" to start a health care program for the poor and uninsured.

McConnell again called for a bipartisan bill even as the Democratic chairman of a key Senate committee announced Thursday that he was pressing ahead regardless of whether ongoing talks with Republicans were successful.

Not a single Republican has endorsed any of the plans approved so far by four House and Senate committees. House GOP leader John Boehner said Wednesday that he doubted Democrats have enough votes to pass the bill after the political setbacks of August.

"If they think they have the votes, we'll let them bring the bill up," Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters. "Don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen."

Republicans chose Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., a heart surgeon who was elected to the House after arthritis forced him to close his practice, to give the GOP's televised response after Obama's speech.

Public May Kick Back

Trying to shove an unwanted health care plan down the citizens' throats may have serious repercussions.

For Obama.

For Pelosi.

For All the Dems.

Obama's Push for Health Care Reform May Use Up His Political Capital

The shift in public tone toward President Obama and his agenda raises fresh questions about the political capital he is expending to push through his top domestic priority, especially after he scored a hard-fought victory to get his $787 billion stimulus package passed.

Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail to change Washington if elected president, and he rode a wave of support based partly on that pledge all the way to the White House.

But change doesn't come cheap, and securing health care reform may wind up costing him much of that support -- known in Washington as political capital.

There already are signs that Obama's support is waning -- notably in his approval rating -- as he and Democratic leaders push to pass an overhaul of the nation's heath care system. And many of the people attending legislators' town hall events this month are voicing outrage and skepticism.

"That's really a big problem for a president that's persuasive but suddenly half the country says I just don't trust you," Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst, told FOX News.

Cont.here:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/15/obamas-push-health-care-reform-squander-political-capital/

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Biggest Threat to the Health of America

Sunday, August 30, 2009

The Future of Health Care in America?

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Can the Government really print money this fast?

Immigration and Health Care: Legislation on the Table WILL Extend Health Care to Illegal Aliens

By James Edwards, Monday, August 24, 2009, 11:06 AM

Just about the time the Center for Immigration Studies was holding a press briefing at the National Press Club about the immigration and health reform connection, proponents from President Obama on down were denying that illegal aliens would receive taxpayer-funded health care under pending legislation.

I’m here to tell you, as I told the Press Club crowd, the legislation on the table does, honest to goodness, effectively extend coverage to illegal aliens.

Take the premium subsidy in the House bill, H.R. 3200. This lies in the part of the legislation (Division A, Title II) that creates a Health Choices Administration, adds the infamous “public option,” sets up and runs the “exchange” clearinghouse for getting insurance, and controls a graduated premium subsidy program through allocation of “individual affordability credits.”

The subsidy, found in Section 242, will give a voucher to people earning between 133 percent of the official poverty level and 400 percent of that income level (or, up to about $88,000 a year for a family of four).

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/edwardsj1/august-24-2009/immigration-and-health-care-legislation-table-will-extend-health-c?jid=242990&lid=9&rid=2235&tid=806935

© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Monday, August 24, 2009

Many a slip.......

What went wrong?

by Janet Crain
Well, I'd like to think the message was DOD. Too much hubris, too much over confidence, too much taking the great unwashed electorate for granted.

No one expected the turnout at Town Hall meetings. It was messy, inconvenient, some even called it un-American. But it was democracy in action and it reminded many of what this country was and is all about. You can take all the lobbyists and Union bosses, all the late night bull sessions by the old pols, take the lock step liberated liberals who march to exactly the same tune, and all the ink and all the electron bits and bites and megabits and throw them in the ocean. The people wouldn't miss them. The people can govern themselves.

From Salon

It's almost Labor Day. Healthcare reform is struggling, the public option is near dead. Why couldn't Obama deliver?

By Thomas Schaller

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

President Obama at a healthcare forum Thursday in Washington.

Aug. 24, 2009 | Barring a major public groundswell or miraculous reversal in Congress, Barack Obama's healthcare reform package will not include the provision that matters most to the Democratic base, the so-called public option. Why has a president who entered the White House with the second-biggest winning margin of any Democratic president since the New Deal, and who is blessed with solid Capitol Hill majorities in both chambers of Congress, struggled to save this key agenda item?

Was the White House's public relations rollout insufficient to counter the stronger-than-anticipated resistance from healthcare opponents? Was the public option always just a bargaining chip to give away in exchange for what the president really wants? What happened to the vaunted Obama campaign apparatus, which was supposed to morph into a machine delivering support for Obama's agenda? Did Obama simply lack the political will or political capital? Or should he have been less of a consensus seeker and more of a Rove-ian steamroller?

Maybe there's some truth to all those scenarios. Call it the public option's "imperfect storm." Yet the policy stumble by a president who demonstrated so much political skill over the past two years merits further inquiry into what went wrong, and why. Here are four possible explanations:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/24/town_halls/?source=newsletter

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Obamacare explained

In contrast to the old methods requiring costly instructors, universities, medical schools, and textbooks, Obamacare will reply heavily upon the Internet for instructions on how to proceed.

This will save enough money to pay for insurance for everyone and the refunding of Medicare and Social Security. And provide yearly stimulus checks for everyone under 50. Oldsters will receive End of Life counseling in lieu of a check.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Slippery Slope to Single Payer

America simply must not be allowed to slip into single payer insurance.

When you're the only game in town, make that the country, you don't have to be any good.You can be lazy, inefficient, rude, incompetent and just plain sorry. Kinda reminds me of the medical care we got from the USAF. It finally got so bad, the military had to give dependents options like CHAMPUS and let them go off base to a community where there was competition. Socialized medicine just doesn't work. Even on a small scale. National would be a nightmare.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Going Bare

by Janet Crain
Sorry, when you've lived as long as I have, you just don't get all teary eyed hearing about uninsured Americans. Some are that way through no fault of their own and that is a concern. Especially those with pre-existing or newly found conditions. They have my sincere sympathy.

But the majority are healthy and they choose to do without. It's called "going bare". I equate these people with those who don't buy an unbrella until it's raining cats and dogs. I once knew a family that turned down the husband's employer's insurance because it incurred a $3.00 a week bookkeeping fee. When their son (yes, they had 6 kids) was injured in a motorcycle wreck, they appealed to the Catholic Church, who paid the bill.

It's the same way with home insurance. Some who own their homes don't think they need insurance until a hurricane, fire, flood or tornado wipes them out.

Then there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. And demands that FEMA build them a new better house.

My advice to the healthy unemployed is get some kind of job. Most school districts offer excellent insurance. Try to get on as bus driver. That will free up your days to job hunt. But don't turn down a job as custodian, teachers aide, maintenance or cafeteria worker.

Counties, cities, etc. also offer group insurance at affordable rates. And while you are looking, buy some catastrophic insurance. It's better to owe $5,000 for an unforeseen emergency that several hundred thousand.

CNSNews.com

Once Again Obama Misstates Number of Uninsured Americans—This Time in a New York Times Op-Ed
Monday, August 17, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

(CNSNews.com) - President Obama for a third time has misstated the number of Americans who lack health insurance, this time doing it in an op-ed piece published Saturday by the New York Times.

“I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is,” Obama said in the op-ed about his efforts to reform the American health care industry.

In a July 22 primetime press conference, Obama falsely said there were “47 million Americans who have no health insurance.” At an August 11 town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., he falsely said “nearly 46 million Americans don't have health insurance coverage today” and that “46 million of our fellow citizens have no coverage.”

© Janet Crain

Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Can Anyone in the Administration Spell Train Wreck?

It shouldn't have been surprising, either, that the tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was. There was Mark Halperin for one, senior political editor for Time, bouncing off his chair, Sunday, in agitation over all the media coverage of this rowdiness—"a horrible breakdown of our political culture, our media culture" and so "bad for America," as he told CNN's Howard Kurtz. "I'm embarrassed about what's going on, as an American."

Well, I am certainly glad Mr. Halperin wasn't at Kings Mountain to see real Americans in action, for he surely would have wet himself. JC

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

It didn't take chaotic town-hall meetings, raging demonstrators and consequent brooding in various sectors of the media to bring home the truth that the campaign for a health-care bill is, to put it mildly, not going awfully well. It's not hard now to envision the state of this crusade with just a month or two more of diligent management by the Obama team—think train wreck. It may one day be otherwise in the more perfect world of universal coverage, but for now disabilities like the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.

Consider former ABC reporter Linda Douglass—now the president's communications director for health reform—who set about unmasking all the forces out there "always trying to scare people when you try to bring them health insurance reform." People, she charged, are taking sentences out of context and otherwise working to present a misleading picture of the president's proposals. One of her key solutions to this problem—her justly famed message encouraging citizens to contact the office at flag@whitehouse.gov if they got an email or other information about health reform "that seems fishy"—set off a riotous flow of online responses. (The word "fishy," with its police detective tone, would have done the trick all by itself.)

These commentaries, packed with allusions to the secret police, the East German Stasi and Orwell, were mostly furious. Others quite simply hilarious. Ms. Douglass, who now has, in her public appearances, the air of a person consigned to service in a holy order, was not amused.

Getty Images

Neither has she seemed to entertain any second thoughts about the tenor of a message enlisting the public in a program reeking of a White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president's health-care program from the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342653428074782.html