from ADMIN:
Obama and the Democrats have been trying to force feed us a health care bill that is extremely large and encompassing more than we know. Do you think it is our Constitutional Right to know EXACTLY what is in the bill?
Baucus Bill Is a Cure Worse than the Disease
by Gregory Conko from: biggovernment.com
With Democratic support coalescing around Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care reform proposal, passage of a comprehensive overhaul now appears more likely than ever. Opponents had their summer of protests. But, Democrats have shown a renewed sense of energy since discrediting Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and Sen. Charles Grassley’s claim that ObamaCare would “pull the plug on grandma.” Still, while those charges may have been a little overwrought, there is plenty to be concerned about with the Democratic health reform effort.
As I explain in a new Competitive Enterprise Institute paper, “A Cure Worse than the Disease: Obama Care Won’t Cut Costs, But May Cut Quality,” most of the alleged cost-cutting measures in the Baucus bill merely shift costs from the federal government onto the states or private payers, without affecting long-term health care inflation. The only measures that could reduce the annual rate of growth in health care costs would erect government barriers between patients and their doctors, while jeopardizing long-term medical innovation.
Skeptics have made hay arguing that the so-called Sustainable Growth Rate can’t be counted on to cut $245-billion in Medicare spending. But Senate Finance Committee negotiators have designed a Medicare Commission—what the White House previously called an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission—to make similar cuts in physician and hospital payment rates in a more opaque way.
In an April New York Times interview, President Obama suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost…the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives.” That’s not exactly a death panel roving the country to pull the plug on innocent grandmas who’ve survived past their sell-by dates, but the effects could be equally pernicious.
What the Medicare Commission is likely to do is work with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute also established by the Baucus bill to incorporate comparative clinical effectiveness recommendations into Medicare and Medicaid payment policies.
In theory, there’s nothing wrong with comparative effectiveness research, or what used to be called evidence-based medicine. Good research comparing the clinical effectiveness, risks, and benefits of two or more medical treatments can help doctors better understand the likely benefits of the treatments they prescribe and improve the quality of care they deliver. But patients vary substantially in their individual physiology, their response rates to drugs and surgical procedures, and their willingness to tolerate side effects. Doctors know this, and they realize that one size definitely does not fit all. That’s why, in practice, evidence-based medicine in the U.S. and abroad has produced incrementally useful information, but has failed to systematically change the practice of medicine.
Generally, we should encourage efforts to eliminate waste and reduce the use of ineffective treatments, especially when we’re talking about public programs and taxpayer money. But the CBO estimates that voluntary adoption by physicians of comparative effectiveness recommendations would reduce federal spending by just 1/100th of 1 percent, and that the Medicare Commission’s payment policies would save $22 billion over the ten year budget window. The only way these programs would result in significant savings–that is, “bend” the cost curve downward–is if legislation or subsequent implementation tries to force the square peg of comparative effectiveness research results into the round hole of clinical practice by requiring physicians to always pick the treatment deemed best for the average patient.
That’s not just bad for patients in the near term, it would also wreak havoc on long term medical innovation. If every new medicine were required, immediately upon gaining regulatory approval, to be effective and cheap enough to get the support of bureaucratic bean counters, research on the next generation of treatments for cancer, heart disease, and countless other serious conditions would slow to a snail’s pace.
Get used to the innovative medical treatments that we already have today. If these programs become part of our health care system, we’ll be seeing a lot fewer treatment innovations tomorrow.
from NaturalNews.com
What’s Really in Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill – A Plain English Translation
Thursday, July 30, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Key concepts: Health, Health care and Healthcare
View on NaturalPedia: Health, Health care and Healthcare
(NaturalNews) Mrs. Bouchard seemed upset.
“I can’t afford health care as yet.”
The new health reform bill
Made her sickly and ill
“But I’d rather have cancer than debt!”
What’s really in Obama’s health care reform bill? Almost no one knows, and here’s why: It’s 1,017 pages long and written in an alien form of bureaucratic English that can barely be decoded by earthlings.
And yet, astonishingly, a U.S. Army translator has been found who speaks “Washington Doublespeak” and he was kind enough to decode the bill and post his plain-language findings over at FreeRepublic.com (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f…).
From Biggovernment.com
TEA PARTY DILEMA: Honey I Shrunk the Party
A national coalition of Tea Party activists called Thursday for rallies in several states to announce their dissatisfaction with the Grand Old Party. In an October 22 press release they state:
We are extremely disappointed that the Republican Party (and leaders like Newt Gingrich) has missed the message of the Tea Parties and continues to take conservative voters for granted. We applaud all courageous statesmen (Fred Thompson, Michelle Bachmann, and Dick Armey) and call on other GOP officials to put America’s values over traditional, often corrupt and morally bankrupt, power structures.
This is nothing new, and it is certainly nothing good. I am no partisan apologist, mind you, and would not support Ms. Scozzafava. My first significant political activity was on behalf of Pat Buchanan in the 1992 Republican primary in New Hampshire against a sitting Republican president. You may remember how that ended: Buchanan lost the primary, and President Bush lost the general election.
That election saw another significant split among conservatives. Ross Perot earned the votes of one-fifth of the electorate. While he did less well in 1996 (8%), he significantly split fiscal conservatives from Republicans. Bill Clinton never achieved 50% of the vote in either election–but took office nonetheless. (This didn’t seem to bother Al Gore at the time.) Perot’s organization eventually collapsed amid its own internecine struggles.
Grover Norquist, in remarks to the 2009 Conservative Heartland Leadership Conference, offered this about working together:
[The Right] should work to nominate and elect the most Reaganite Republican we can in any given district or state. Now, we need to understand that that’s going to be a little bit different in Maine than Texas, and so it’s like grading on a curve. I want the two Republicans out of Maine. They are much better than the D’s we would have had out of Maine. Okay? We’ve been disappointed in their votes from time to time. There are two teams, there are two major Parties in the United States. They are heading in completely different directions.
By picking a fight within the GOP and calling for an inquisition against RINOs, Tea Party activists are sowing the seeds of all our defeat. There are plenty of people within the Republican Party with whom we disagree. But reducing our current 218 members in the US House and Senate to a more pure 200 or 190 is no victory at all.
Chris Wilson of Wilson Research Strategies–and a fellow brigand from that 1992 Buchanan campaign–published a similar concern:
I don’t necessarily disagree with how the Tea Party members are expressing their anger and backing a candidate they believe in; however, their work will split the Republican vote and give NY CD23 to the Democrats.
The reason I believe the Republican and Conservative party candidates will fail is because they draw support from the same vote base. If you split the conservative and moderate Republicans in just about any race in the nation, the base erodes and the candidate will lose.
I understand the urge to clean one’s own house, but as I learned from Morton Blackwell, “don’t make the good the enemy of the perfect.” The issue in New York’s 23rd may very well be resolved due to pressure from national conservatives, but a campaign of eating our own is not something we should relish.
One Response to “Health Care”
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What the MSM leaves out! 
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this is gettin to be rediculous… I cant remember when we’ve had a deficit as big as we have now. Dems want to spend more, and more and more. im on medicare and i dont want to lose my benefits. STOP SPENDING… you liberal yahoos