BLOG POSTS with the TAG: "Universal Healthcare"
by rayharvey on August 27, 2009
Poor misunderstood Ezekiel J. Emanuel.
Ezekiel, if you don’t know, is the older brother of the statist Rahm Emanuel, and recently Ezekiel got his feelings hurt.
In an interview he just gave the Associated Press, Monday (August 24th), Ezekiel said this:
“I’m completely dumbfounded. I’ve been in academic disputes before, but I never thought I’d be disparaged on Sunday morning talk shows and in the papers, being distorted in ways that can only be described as willful and intentional.”
What Ezekiel Emanuel is referring to here is what that same AP article describes as The sometimes ugly health care debate [which] has dragged Ezekiel Emanuel very reluctantly into the spotlight, as opponents of Obama’s proposed reform have seized on snippets of his past writings to bolster their charge that he and the administration advocate a system where bureaucrats — on what former Gov. Sarah Palin has famously called “death panels” — would play God, ruling on whether ailing Grandma deserves medical care. The accusations have been widely debunked as distortions of Emanuel’s and the administration’s views. Still, they persist, leaving Emanuel both stunned and hurt.
You see, it’s tough being a eugenicist. If you doubt that, just watch Ezekiel squirm like the worm that he is under this historian’s searing testimony:
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 6 Comments |  News, Obama Campaign |  Permalink
 Posted by rayharvey on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 3:23 am
by rayharvey on August 20, 2009
The following audio is clipped from Air America radio. Air America, if you don’t know, is about as far left as it gets, and it is these same people who have recently turned on Barack Obama — in a big way. Why? Because of the scandal nobody in the Mainstream Media (a.k.a. Make Up Media [hat tip GG]) is talking about — yet. Please forward this along.
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5 Comments | Health Care, Tea Parties | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 3:04 am
by rayharvey on August 14, 2009
The following letter is from Doctor Max Stanley Chartrand, of Rye, Colorado. It’s longish, but brilliant (even if I don’t agree with every word of it). Please forward it along:
Dear All:
Recently, some of my letters to the editor in papers across the nation have generated requests from people who want to know what they can do to stop the steamroller juggernaut we call ObamaCare. This is offered in response to them and some of you who may not have requested this information. It is my sincere hope that every thinking, breathing, freedom-loving American will step up the plate on this issue and speak with one voice: This, and any variation of it, is bad medicine for America and we want no part of it.
To give you the background you need to be armed with facts that our legislators say they are too busy to analyze, we’ve highlighted some of the 1,018 pages of the bill. There are entire organizations and think tanks who have analyzed this bill down to the nth degree. Some of the sites featuring there work can be found at www.nationalcenter.org, www.myheritage.org/, and www.freedomfirstsociety.org
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3 Comments | Fact Of The Day, Health Care | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 2:46 am
by rayharvey on August 11, 2009
Here’s a brief breakdown of HR-3200 in its own language. This analysis comes from Professor John David Lewis of Duke University:
1. Will the PLAN ration medical care?
This is what the bill says, pages 284-288, SEC. 1151. REDUCING POTENTIALLY PREVENTABLE HOSPITAL READMISSIONS:
(ii) EXCLUSION OF CERTAIN READMISSIONS.—For purposes of clause (i), with respect to a hospital, excess readmissions shall not include readmissions for an applicable condition for which there are fewer than a minimum number (as determined by the Secretary) of discharges for such applicable condition for the applicable period and such hospital. and, under “Definitions”:
‘‘(A) APPLICABLE CONDITION.—The term ‘applicable condition’ means, subject to subparagraph (B), a condition or procedure selected by the Secretary . . .
and:
‘‘(E) READMISSION.—The term ‘readmission’ means, in the case of an individual who is discharged from an applicable hospital, the admission of the individual to the same or another applicable hospital within a time period specified by the Secretary from the date of such discharge.
and:
‘‘(6) LIMITATIONS ON REVIEW.—There shall be no administrative or judicial review under section 1869, section 1878, or otherwise of— . . .
‘‘(C) the measures of readmissions . . .
EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGES:
1. This section amends the Social Security Act
2. The government has the power to determine what constitutes an “applicable [medical] condition.”
3. The government has the power to determine who is allowed readmission into a hospital.
4. This determination will be made by statistics: when enough people have been discharged for the same condition, an individual may be readmitted.
5. This is government rationing, pure, simple, and straight up.
6. There can be no judicial review of decisions made here. The Secretary is above the courts.
7. The plan also allows the government to prohibit hospitals from expanding without federal permission: page 317-318.
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5 Comments | Fact Of The Day, Health Care | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 3:26 am
by rayharvey on August 4, 2009
What is now termed modern medicine actually began in the early 1920s when science — in particular, germ theory — culminated to a point that sickness and disease were at last being treated reliably. It was then that doctors and hospitals got much better at the business of saving lives. This more highly developed service and expertise raised the value of their work, and they charged accordingly for their increased skill and labor.
That’s when the situation started: for when lives can be saved and health can be gained because of developments in technology, everyone suddenly believes that it’s their right to have that thing. We see the same principle at work in, for example, the platitude “No one should go hungry when Americans are throwing away food.”
The error in both cases is the fraudulent notion that survival should be assured. This notion neglects the singular fact that abundance and technology are produced — and produced, moreover, by individuals.
No one has the right to the life and labor (i.e. production) of any individual, including the life and labor of doctors.
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No Comments Yet | Fact Of The Day, Health Care | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 3:51 am
by rayharvey on July 27, 2009
On July 1st, 2009, in an ABC infomercial, Barack Obama said that “46 million Americans are uninsured.”
In fact, the Census Bureau puts the number of uninsured at 45,657,000 people, but nearly 9.7 million of those 45.7 million are, as the census bureau says, “not citizens.”
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3 Comments | Marxism, Socialism, U.S. Economy | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 12:45 am
by rayharvey on July 21, 2009
Only Barack evidently doesn’t know it. Quoting his own words:
Obama, June 11: “And so what you’ve got is a situation where, for example, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is famous for some of the best quality and some of the lowest cost. People are healthier coming out of there, they do great.”
Obama, June 24: “Well, I think what’s important is to say to the American People that you should get the best possible care to make you well. And that the measure of the quality of care is not quantity, but whether or not it is making you better. Now, what we’ve seen is that there’s some communities and some health systems that do this very well. Mayo Clinic, a classic example. In Rochester, Minnesota. People go there. They– spend about 20-30 percent less than some other parts of the country, and yet have better outcomes.”
Obama, July 1: “There are some places, like the Mayo Clinic — many of you have heard of — provides outstanding care, some of the best in the world. People fly in from everywhere to go to Mayo Clinic to get treatment. It turns out Mayo provides care much more cheaply than a lot of other health systems, even though it’s better care.”
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No Comments Yet | Barack Obama, Big Government Growth, Big Government Spending, Fact Of The Day, Headlines | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 11:35 am
by rayharvey on July 16, 2009
America’s putatively high infant mortality rates are (along with life expectancies) among the most trumpeted healthcare canards going. The purpose is to try to convince you that American medicine is not actually the best medicine in the world but would only be such if the healthcare system in America were nationalized — a move, incidentally, from which America as we know her would almost certainly never recover.
Without a proper context, the statistics on infant mortality, with all their devilish intricacies, are, to say the least, misleading. Quoting Doctor Robert J. Cihak (M.D.), a Senior Fellow and Board Member of the Discovery Institute and past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons:
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No Comments Yet | Big Government Spending, Fact Of The Day, Health Care | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 12:37 am
by rayharvey on May 27, 2009
 According to hard figures just released by the Medicare Board of Trustees, Medicare alone — forget, for a moment, Medicaid — is currently $89 trillion deep in unfunded liability.
Social Security tacks on to that figure an additional $15 trillion in unfunded liability.
To put those outlandish numbers into slightly better perspective, the entire United States economy “only” produces $14 trillion a year.
The Medicare Board of Trustees Report goes on to estimate the following:
By 2018, less than 10 years from now, Medicare Part A alone will be running a deficit of close to $100 billion. General revenue contributions for Medicare Parts B and D that year are now projected to be $364 billion. Consequently, the deficit for Medicare alone that year will be close to $500 billion. And this assumes a scheduled reduction in doctor and hospital reimbursements under Medicare of over 20% starting in 2010.
Medicaid will also be costing the federal government close to $500 billion per year by then, with another $300 billion spent on the program by the states. That is a total burden on general taxpayers for these two programs alone of $1.3 trillion by 2018, in addition to payroll taxes and Medicare premiums. Medicare premiums by 2018 are projected to be about $750 per month per beneficiary, covering only 14% of expenditures. Medicare will be spending by that year close to $17,000 per beneficiary.
Medicare Part A will run out of funds to pay promised benefits by 2017, with a 20% shortfall in revenues. Paying all promised benefits for Part A alone over the long run would require raising the total Medicare payroll tax from 2.9% today to 12%. That is in addition to the Social Security payroll tax of 12.4% today, which would have to increase to close to 18% to pay all promised benefits for that program. That would result in a total payroll tax rate of 30% (Source).
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No Comments Yet | Fact Of The Day, Health Care, News, Socialism | Permalink
Posted by rayharvey on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
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