The Death Care Bill

The more I hear about this health care plan the more I despise it. The good news is that politicians and people are now talking about the clause in the bill that turns it into a death care bill, not a health care bill. I quoted it in an earlier blog but it deserves to be repeated because people need to know what our government is proposing: “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill” and therefore there will have to be some kind of “difficult” and “democratic conversation” that will take place to give “guidance” as to what patients will receive life-sustaining, and expensive, treatments. Oh great. That's all we need - the government to determine who should get medical treatment. No potential for scandals there, right?

And yet they do have a point. I recently had a discussion about a 93 year old woman who had a hip replacement surgery and I must admit that I thought it was a bit much at that age. I was even more disturbed when told that they had found bone cancer and were reviewing all kinds of treatments to extend the poor old woman’s life for another six months or so. In this case I thought it was a waste of money and the doctor’s time; that the best treatment was to make the elderly woman comfortable and out of pain and let her end her life with dignity.

So in this case I agreed with the proposed health care plan. But this was about cutting off surgeries to a 93 year old. How do you determine what that cut off age should be? Should treatment be stopped at 90 or maybe 80 or perhaps go down to 70? In actuality, the health care plan was written where they could refuse treatment to anyone over 59 years old! Hell, Tom Watson, who will turn 60 in Sept. nearly won the British Open and yet this health care bill will consider him as old and potentially unworthy of medical treatment in 2 months!

Think about the implications of this odious bill. A healthy 60 year old man who has a heart attack could be given minimal treatment while a 64 year old woman with breast cancer could be denied chemo treatment since keeping these “old” people alive would be deemed “too expensive” especially if they lived to the current average age of 78. It would instead be much cheaper and we would free up surgeons and medical centers if we simply give these sick people pain meds and let them die. And yet, one of the first things Obama did upon becoming president was to restore a provision in the Endangered Species Protection Act that Bush had removed that would provide greater protection to animals.

What does this tell us? That liberals seem to be more concerned about the welfare of the spotted owl, titmouse, American burying beetle and other obscure animals than they are for your grandparents, parents, diabetic Uncle, chronically ill sister, paraplegic friend or Cystic Fibrosis niece? And at a time when Obama promises new jobs with shovel ready federal projects he has just hamstrung those very federal projects by reinstating that clause in the Endangered Species Protection Act which would require any federal project to undergo an independent scientific review that might affect a protected species. So these new federal projects needed to provide jobs could be delayed or even stopped because of some mouse or fish or bird. Yet while denying jobs in order to save a damn bug the government is condoning euthansia by denying medical treatment to the elderly. This is insane!

What makes it even more preposterous is if you factor in the liberals religious beliefs. For it almost is forgivable to let the elderly die if, as in most religions, you believe that they will be going to a better place. But liberals tend to be atheists. So they don’t have this comforting belief that those who are dying will go to heaven. To the atheists, when you die, you are dead and gone and that’s it. Believing there is nothing after death makes their proposal to take away expensive treatments from seniors (defined as over 59, mind you) and to simply let them die that much crueler than if they thought the dying would go to heaven. Think about it. How cold is that?

We have got to stop this insanity. Mankind must come first and people should recognize that each life is precious. For if we start to deny aid to the elderly then who will be next? Liberals already deplore using animals to test potentially life saving drugs so they might decide we could save a lot of money (and animals) by not funding research to find cures for chronic illnesses and simply let them die, too. Or will expectant mothers one day be required to take tests to determine if their fetus’s have any chronic illness and therefore the pregnancy must be terminated before the child is born and all the health costs are incurred? What might they decide to do with the mentally ill? Once started how far down that slippery slope will we go?

This is still America. The health care reform is the very antithesis of why this country was founded. For remember that each of us was promised Life, not death, in our country’s Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

A Racist in the White House?

I started this blog partly to rant against the growing power of political correctness in this country. So I might as well say what I bet a lot of people are thinking about the Cambridge situation but are hindered by political correctness: Professor Gates, you were not arrested because you are black – you were arrested because you are at the very least a complete idiot and at worst a total asshole, but again it had nothing to do with your ethnicity, but rather was a result of your own actions.

When a police officer tells you to do something, you do it. You don’t continue screaming profanity and invectives when asked to calm down. Just as you don’t run when told to freeze or fight when told to lie down. Most law abiding people will follow an officer’s directions and if someone doesn’t then the cops have every right to think that the person is hiding something, like maybe he really is a criminal.

For some reason African Americans frequently refuse to follow a police officers’ instructions, even if they are innocent, as in the case of Professor Gates. Their reasoning is that the policemen are accusing them based on profiling, that because they are black the cops assume they are guilty. Personally, I think profiling is a wonderful tool but that is a subject for another day. Instead, to continue, what I don’t get is how does resisting the police help prove their case that the officers were racist? Wouldn’t a better course of action be to act as model citizens, following all of their requests and thereby showing the world that the police are acting unfairly? And don’t give me the argument that they fear the police will kill them if they let the cops capture them or that if they lie down they could be kicked and beaten, because it seems to me that there is a lot better chance of being tasered or killed if they resist arrest.

I also believe that most whites don’t understand why Gates was so upset that the police asked for his ID after the situation was explained to him. If Gates thought the police simply saw a black man entering a house in an upscale neighborhood then yes, I would understand if he was frustrated. But the police explained that they were investigating a burglary report. As Gates was the one found entering the house they approached him. What was racist about that? And at this point, instead of yelling “Racist” shouldn’t Gates have been grateful to the police for protecting his home?

Adding to this mess was Obama’s reaction. You want to know something interesting? Now I might be the only one but I honestly forgot that President Obama was black. He has been on TV so frequently over the past few weeks and I’ve become so use to seeing him that his color simply no longer registers with me. And that’s the way we’ve been told that it should be – we should all be color blind, except we’ve just learned that the President sure isn’t. By now the whole world knows how he labeled the Cambridge police as “acting stupidly” and accused them of being racist. I think he deserves the “acting stupidly” label more than the Cambridge police.

First, Obama acted stupidly by stepping on his own message about the (hopefully doomed) health care plan during his press conference. The Cambridge story totally eclipsed whatever the President said about health care during the first 90% of his press conference. Then in one ill conceived comment Obama shocked a lot of people by admitting he didn’t have all the facts and yet he still sided with another black man against this country’s law enforcement officers by assuming they were racially motivated. Wow. The 2008 election was supposed to usher in the post racist years where African Americans can be whatever they want to be, even President. But Obama blew that all away taking the country back a few steps from the gains he had made last year. More importantly, however, I personally think that for one of the first times, this country saw the real President Obama; an angry black man who holds police officers in contempt and believes that most cops (most whites?) are racists. Scary thought, isn’t it?

President Obama, however, is a smart politician and knew he had to make amends yesterday. Yet even then he refused to be up-front. Oh it is easy for him to apologize to the world for what he perceives were America’s “misdeeds” but he can’t seem to apologize to his own country for his own misdeeds. He spoke a couple of times yesterday supposedly apologizing for his remarks but Obama said neither “I was wrong” nor “I was sorry”. In fact I am not exactly sure what he said except for one phrase that stood out to me: “in my choice of words I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically and I could have calibrated those words differently." Calibrated his words? Excuse me?

Have you ever known anyone who calibrated their words or even used the word calibrated in that way? His phrase “calibrated those words differently” indicates that Obama does indeed calibrate his words. And once more I’m going to go back to his teleprompter. For it is again clear that when writing his speeches, Obama calibrates each word and phrase so as to give a specific impression and sway the listeners to his side. Putting it all together, I am getting this picture of a slick carefully spoken politician expounding on his message of helping people but underneath is an angry black man who distrusts whites and wants to use his powers to help his fellow blacks even if it is at the detriment to whites in this country. Am I wrong? Perhaps. But I do believe one thing, that Obama’s mask slipped this week and we caught a glimpse of the real racist in the whole situation.

More Lies, Evasions and Falsehoods

There you go again, Mr. President. Once more President Obama played fast and loose with the truth as he hoped to convince people about the health care plan. Let's take rationing which he says won't happen. He also told America that people with insurance won't be affected. Bull. The concept of rationing is totally unknown to Americans. People have never had to deal with rationing, except for the elderly during WWII and gas rationing in the 70s, and therefore most have no idea how it will really affect them.

I became curious after hearing that over 40 million people will be suddenly insured and seeking medical attention. Wow. Seemed to me that would affect us all. With very little effort I was able to find the most recent 2006 census reports showing the number of insured and uninsured people by state and the number of doctors. I could then determine how many people with health insurance, on average, are there for each doctor and then what would be the effect of adding in all the uninsured people. Here is the table I created:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlQpxl73ztModC11MzFYUXhFOGZ1cDhjYjNSU1JrTGc&hl=en (to access the table see the directions on the right.)

On average, there will be 59 more people for each doctor if the health bill is passed. Ha, and you thought the wait was long now! But look at the states who will gain 80 or more people per doctor (highlighted in red on the table) versus the states who will add just 35 or less people per doctor (highlighted in blue). The states with the biggest burdens are primarily in the South while those least affected are in the Northeast and Rust belt. While states like Mississippi, with large number of poor and few doctors will have an additional 117 people per doctor after the health care bill is passed Northeast states like Massachusetts will have only 22 added people per doctor. No wonder Ted Kennedy is all for it! It will barely be felt in his state.

What this shows is that rationing will be unequal; heavily punishing Southern states which just happen to be more conservative states while the solid blue states will have little rationing. In many ways it is very much like the school system where states like Texas and New Mexico are burdened with large numbers of immigrants, legal or otherwise, whose children are overcrowding their schools. These same crowds will now be found in their doctor’s office once the health care bill is passed. So the cost will be unequally spread throughout the US and further dividing red states from blue states. And rationing will become a way of life for those in the South if the bill is passed.

Then there were Obama’s continuous remarks last night that we pay more for health care but get the same quality of care as other countries who pay $6,000 less per person. Earlier this week, a woman wrote a compelling article and later testified that the exact opposite would happen to special needs children. Her example struck home as she was the mother of a child with Cystic Fibrosis. As the Aunt of a beautiful young girl with CF I am well aware that the current life expectancy is 37 years old. This woman who testified told Congress that in Ireland, where there is national health care, the life expectancy of CF children is only 27 years old. That is what national health care will do – take 10 years off the already shortened life because they don’t have access to the best medicines, doctors and treatments. And in Britain, none of the 38 cystic fibrosis centers in Britain reported that they received enough funding to provide government-recommended levels of care for patients.

Finally, in her article http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/columns/oped_contributors/For-special-needs-patients-nationalized-health-care-will-make-things-worse-50815062.html she includes the following chilling statements: Obama has specifically said that the “chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill” and therefore there will have to be some kind of “difficult” and “democratic conversation” that will take place to give “guidance” as to what patients will receive life-sustaining, and expensive, treatments.

I’m sorry but that sounds like Nazi Germany, not America. And it scares me and should scare you. Sure, you might be healthy today, but you never know about tomorrow. Three months ago I had a 10 hour emergency surgery to save my right leg damaged by blood clots. I wonder if I had been rushed to the hospital after the health bill had passed if some government official might have instead made the "difficult" decision to provide a shorter, easier operation by simply chopping off my leg instead.

And even if you are healthy for your entire life you most likely will still be old some day; so do you or your loved one really want to be at the "mercy" of the government?

Ted Kennedy: Then and Now

Ted Kennedy is once again in the news. The liberal media is going to town with the image of Kennedy rising from his sick bed to promote Obama’s health care plan. NewsBusters.org includes quotes from two different reporters:

World News anchor Dan Harris highlighted how “Kennedy is using his own battle against brain cancer to make an emotional pitch for health care reform” and NBC reporter Mike Viqueira touted: “Today, another dramatic push, this time from an ailing Ted Kennedy, absent from Washington but appearing on the cover of Newsweek and writing: ‘This is the cause of my life. We will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege’.”

Oh yes, that’s Teddy Kennedy, champion of the sick, putting aside his own illness to fight for someone else’s right for help. That is unless that someone is trapped inside of a submerged car, then he’ll simply walk away letting her die alone, waiting until the next morning to call for help.

Speaking of that, did you know that the 40th anniversary of the events at Chappaquiddick occurred over the weekend? What, no one in the media cared to put that on the news? Gee, how surprising…

Kennedy, like so many liberals, professes love and concern for the masses but if that help impinges on him in any way then he’ll just walk away without a backwards glance. He needs, no he in fact demands, that someone else takes care of those pesky little details, like a dead body back then or paying the trillions today. Plus it is always easier to “make an emotional pitch” for a group of unknown people than to have to deal with one person face to face. The former is more sterile, more in the abstract then the reality of dealing with a real person (dead or alive).

Since there will be no “emotional pitch” from Kennedy than I will step in and ask that after everyone say a prayer for Mary Jo Kopechne and her family, 40 years after Kennedy left her to die in his submerged car that he had drunkenly drove off a bridge. And I can’t help but wonder if once again Kennedy is going to leave us trapped in a smashed up car with rising water around us, this time in the guise of health care in which we’ll drown in trillions of dollars in debt if it is passed.

The Truth on Obama's Health Care Plan

Remember when Bill Clinton was trying to avoid lying by asking the court to “define the word ‘is’”? Well, the current President is just as much of a slick lawyer except instead of twisting words to avoid acknowledging an affair this President is parsing his words in order to mislead the American public about his health care bill. And I don’t mean he is less than truthful about some obscure part of it but he is trying to fool us about the primary intent of this bill; to socialize medicine by bankrupting private insurance and replacing it with government run insurance, doctors, hospitals and drugs.

I always thought that something about this health care plan smelled badly but I didn’t have any evidence until I stumbled upon a blog by NewsBusters in which they were discussing an article by Investors Daily Business (IDB) http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/07/16/ibd-individual-private-health-insurance-illegal-under-house-bill. You see IDB did something quite outrageous, they actually read the entire 1000+ page health care bill, something which I doubt any of the lawmakers currently discussing and voting on the issue have done. And within those pages is a total contradiction to what Obama and the Democrats have been promising.

Here is what President Obama recently said in a major speech to the AMA about his health care bill, “…If you like what you're getting, keep it. Nobody is forcing you to shift. But if you're not, this gives you some new options. And I believe one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force -- so that we can force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest…”

This is basically what everyone has told us; those with insurance can keep what they have and those without can choose between public or private insurance options. In fact, Obama takes head on the accusation that private insurance will eventually disappear; “So when you hear the naysayers claim that I'm trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They're not telling the truth.”

But when reading the health care bill, IBD came across a section titled “Protecting the Choice To Keep Current Coverage” on page 16 which stated: "Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of the year the legislation becomes law”.

This is written in typical misleading legalize and I had to read it a few times before I realized what it was saying: Private health insurance companies will not be allowed to enroll anyone new after the bill becomes law. Wow. Take a moment and let the enormity of that sentence sink in. So yes, people can keep their private insurance. But if you were uninsured you won’t be able to enroll in a private insurance company; you would be forced to use the government insurance plan, whatever that might be. And if you are already insured but you like another private insurance plan better, too bad, you can’t have it.

So who is the liar Mr. President? This bill will kill private insurance companies for how can any private insurance company survive without new customers? In contrast to what is being promised, this bill will force the uninsured into a public plan. Although I carefully reread what Obama said and I realize that he never actually stated that the uninsured could get private insurance: “…this gives you some new options. And I believe one of these options needs to be a public option…” Oh yes, he is a lawyer carefully parsing his sentences to sound one way yet actually mean the exact opposite.

And where he said that people are not telling the truth when they say that he is trying to bring about government health care? I can see where a slick lawyer might argue that this is correct, that Obama isn’t trying to bring about government health care – he is succeeding in doing it!

Perhaps this is the key to that teleprompter. Everything that Obama says is a carefully crafted lie or misdirection. He is a master at telling the public what they want to hear while hiding his true intentions. Luckily a few people, including some from his own party and even a couple of journalists are beginning to question his words, his motives and his goals. In fact Obama just might have gone too far with this new health care bill. We need more folks like IBD and NewsBusters to dig into the true intent of the health care bill and then to let the public know that it isn’t what they say it is. President Obama will again address the nation on this topic so listen carefully to what he says and what he omits. And if it smells bad then it probably really does stink.

Time to Fire Bad Employees

The federal story of security guards sleeping, texting or doing their job poorly seems to be typical of what we’ve been hearing lately. A train crashed? Subway problem? Security breaches? Odds are that it was because of an employee error. We are even hearing that the manager of the Disney World monorail was off site – at the local Perkins pancake restaurant literally phoning in his job.

The fact that some employees are slacking off is not unusual. It happens. What is appalling is that they are still employed. Think about it. This is an employers market as the unemployment rate is closing in to 10%. Now is the time for employers to fire bad employees as there would be a long line of people who would love to take their place.

I never understood or could tolerate slackers at work. The ones who spent half the morning talking about what they did the night before or cooking and eating breakfast or even putting on their makeup and curling the hair. Then they while away the work hours on the internet, or on the phone, or running errands. And of course they are always gone before the minute hand gets to five o’clock. You would think, though, in today’s environment of high unemployment that these folks would put in a little bit of effort for fear that they might lose their jobs. But nope, they continue to go through their day doing as little as possible.

Case in point was my cable guy who stopped by on Saturday to replace my cable box. The cable man started to grumble that he had seven jobs to do that morning when the rules were you shouldn’t have more than three or four in a four hour period. Having just started this blog I was surprised to hear him echo what I had recently written. For he complained that most of the other workers barely completed three jobs in as many hours whereas he does nearly twice as many. And because he is faster then management gives him the jobs that the slackers weren’t going to get around to doing because they were so slow.

Ah yes. The eternal complaint of the efficient worker – if you show you can do something faster than others than they simply pile on more work and end up expecting more from you than from everybody else. And heaven forbid if the good employee should question aloud if they can get all this extra work done. Because that would then elicit a remark that use to really anger me. For if you wonder if you can get the heavy load of work completed then someone will invariably say what are you worrying about, of course you will finish it because you have always gotten it done before. As if somehow you magically do the work without taking into account the 12 hour days and six or seven days you have to work in order to complete the job by the deadline. And then management wonders why they can’t hold on to good employees.

Anyway, there is no excuse for companies to be riddled with slackers, inefficient workers or incompetent employees today. Not when there are dozens of unemployed people who would be delighted to have the job and would actually work hard. Now I don’t usually complain to management when I am faced with a bad employee but I think I just might start to do so. If someone is so blasé that they continue to provide poor customer service or do a job inaccurately then that person should be given a wake up call. Tell their manager when you get bad service. And if the employee is ultimately let go – oh well. At worst you are providing a job opportunity to someone who will appreciate having that job and at best you just might prevent another deadly accident.

Short Retort

I just watched an interview on Fox with Colin Hanna, President of Let Freedom Ring. He was stating that they have developed a Pledge for Congressmen and women to sign in which they pledged to read the Health Care Reform bill. Hmmm.. Sound familiar? My Fourth of July blog discussed the exact same thing although I think they should read every bill.

If you agree that your Senator and Representatives should actually read the Health Care Reform bill, the most important bill to hit Congress in decades then go to Let Freedom Ring and download a copy of their Pledge and send it to your Congressmen and women. http://www.letfreedomringusa.com/pledge-to-read

No Taxation Without Cogitation!

On this 4th of July weekend I would like to propose a revised version of the slogan that helped to rally the continental troops into fighting and defeating the English. Back then our forefathers complained that they had no vote in whether or not they would be taxed. Instead the King imposed all taxes. So the great slogan of No taxation without representation was born, thus helping to create the United States of America

Today, I propose a slight change to this slogan to reflect our current situation. My revised slogan is No taxation without cogitation. Aren’t familiar with cogitation? It’s a great old fashioned word that means concerted thought or reflection. So what I want my representatives to do is simply read all proposed bills, think about it and then vote. Sounds reasonable, right? And yet, from the first Congress there have been a few Senators and Representatives who would never bother to read a bill but would vote the party line. However starting this year, major bills are being passed in which none of our Congressmen or women are bothering to read what they are voting on much less cogitating on how much it would cost us, the citizens, when the bill is implemented.

This new trend started with the Stimulus Bill which grew into a 1000+ page bill which no one could have read in its entirety in the brief time between publishing the bill and voting on it. This massive bill, which would spend over $787 billion of our money, was passed by 246 people (ok mainly democrats) in the House and by 60 Senators. To their credit, our government officials were told that they had to vote on this bill immediately in order to resuscitate a dying economy. And yes, in January 2009 the news was grim with increasing unemployment and major companies failing left and right. We also had a new and exciting administration and so it is understandable if a vote on this bill was seen as yet one more support of Obama.

For all of these reasons, this massive bill, which few people read, was pushed through Congress on record time in order to save our economy. Now it is six months later yet less than a tenth of the money has been spent. OK, I'm all for saving the money if the economy is rebounding. Oh wait. The economy is worse than the start of the year. In fact, Obama’s economic team had said that if the bill was passed then the 7.2% unemployment rate at the time of the vote would probably peak at 8%. Oops. They just announced that our current unemployment rate is 9.1%. And that is with the $787 billion in stimulus aid! Seems to me that maybe somebody ought to finally read all 1000+ pages to see just what that money is earmarked for and how it is supposed to be stimulating our economy. All it has stimulated so far is the unemployment rate.

But did Congress learn? No. In fact last week the House of Representatives did it again. They passed another long bill regarding a new concept of Cap and Trade. From what I understand it is basically a taxing platform to raise money from corporations and citizens to spend on “green” environmental stuff. Even putting aside the ongoing arguments (and yes Senator Gore, people are still debating global warming as they should) there is still the unconscionable fact that our Congressmen and women once again voted on a bill which they didn’t read.

This time it was a complete farce. When Representatives complained that they didn’t even have a copy of the bill Speaker Nancy Pelosi told them that there was one copy at the podium. That’s it; one copy for over 400 people to share and read. Only problem is that even that “final” copy was missing the 300 pages of addendums added at 3am of the day of the vote. Denying Representatives a chance to even read a bill is a complete abuse of her power. Plus it is one thing to be loyal to a new administration but to blindly pass massive bills unread which would change the foundation of this country and heavily tax citizens in an effort to redistribute wealth is unethical and disgusting.

Has it reached the point where we need to demand that if a bill requires new or increased taxes then our Senators and Representatives who vote on it must sign a statement indicating that they read it in full? They would then be held accountable for what was in that bill and what they approved with their vote. If they were forced to read it and to be accountable then they just might produce reasonable bills without pages and pages of rediculous earmarks.

Plus isn’t accountability what Obama promised us? Wasn’t his administration supposed to be one of both accountability and transparency? And yet Congressmen can’t even get their own copy of a bill and when they do the bills are so voluminous that no one can read it in time for the vote. Plus there is the whole issue of the unheard of speed in which these bills are being forced through committees and onto the floor with little to no discussions and not even time to read it even if you had your own copy and wanted to read it.

It is time to say Stop! We must demand No taxation without cogitation! We and our children and grandchildren will be paying for the taxes hidden in these unread bills and we can’t let this go on. Beginning with the upcoming Senate vote on the Cap and Trade we must demand that our Senators at least read the bill before they vote on it.

And how sad that we even have to tell our Senators and Representatives to read something before voting on it. But thanks to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid who are trying to jam bills with massive taxing and redistribution of our country's wealth down our throats then we must demand of our Congressmen and women to read the bill and think about its implications before voting on it.

So join me in shouting No taxation without cogitation and maybe someday there might actually be a vote by people who have read the bill, understand its tax implication and had a lively intelligent discussion about it. Now wouldn't that be nice....