posted January 17, 2011 02:48 PM            

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted January 17, 2011 06:35 PM            

With that being said, I don't agree with the Health Care law either. BTW..It's not really that different from Mitt Romney's plan.

I believe that universal healthcare can be a good thing. I believe that more money should be spent on healthcare and education.

The thing is that extreme amounts of money were spent on the military including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latter war was a war that shouldn't have started, and an ongoing huge price is being paid.

If there was far less spending on military matters, there would be plenty of money to spend on health care and education.

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 06:37 PM            

*

Mitt Romney's healthcare hypocrisy and the GOP base
AP/Cliff Owen
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in February.

It's not news when man bites dog, so why should it be any different when Mitt Romney makes a brash and insincere pronouncement?

And yet there was the one-time Massachusetts governor forcing his way into Monday morning's headlines with what may have been the most over-the-top of all of the over-the-top Republican reactions to the House's passage of Barack Obama's healthcare plan.

"An unconscionable abuse of power," Romney declared while asserting that the president "has betrayed his oath to the nation."

When Mitt starts talking like this, it's usually because he knows his own past record makes him vulnerable on the issue at hand.

And when it comes to healthcare, his hypocrisy is particularly galling. Romney is actually the only governor in American history ever to impose an individual health insurance mandate on his citizens. And an individual mandate, of course, is at the heart of Obama's reform package.

Nor is the mandate the only common ground between RomneyCare and ObamaCare; the Massachusetts plan that Romney signed into law in 2006 is essentially the blueprint for Obama's plan. Both rely on the same basic formula: a requirement that everyone purchase insurance and government assistance for those who can't afford it.

But Romney can never admit this. He's the early front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nod and the party's base is convinced that Obama's reform package represents some kind of Marxist plot. So Romney must be against it -- really against it. It's as if he believes the combination of heat and volume in his response to the House vote will cause Republicans to ignore his own Massachusetts record.

It's worth remembering how Romney got himself into this pickle in the first place, because it says a lot about the irrational nature of the GOP opposition to Obama's healthcare push.

In the spring of 2006, Romney and his office worked closely with Massachusetts' Democratic-dominated Legislature to craft the state's new healthcare law -- individual mandate and all. Romney's motives had nothing to do with currying favor with the state's left-of-center electorate. He had long since shifted his attention away from the Bay State and to the national stage. He switched his position on abortion and announced he wouldn't seek a second term in 2005, and by '06 he was spending nearly as much time out of the state as in it -- never missing a chance to warm up national conservative crowds with cracks about his home state.

This is important to note because it establishes that Romney saw his healthcare law as an opportunity to distinguish himself from his '08 GOP rivals -- not as the political albatross it has become. And he had good reason to feel this way. With the law, he could point to a singular gubernatorial achievement, bolstering his executive credentials. It also created an unspoken contrast with John McCain, the GOP's front-runner and a creature of the legislative branch.

Nor did Romney have to fear a revolt from the right. Back in '06, the standard for healthcare reform was still Bill Clinton's failed 1994 scheme, which would have issued citizens their own insurance cards and set up a complicated new bureaucracy. Romney's plan was the antithesis of that: a private insurance-friendly individual mandate and a new "connector" that would allow consumers in the individual and small group markets to shop around for the best deals. Notably, Romney sought and received the blessing of the Heritage Foundation before signing the bill at a lavish ceremony (during which a Heritage representative spoke).

So what changed between then and now? It's pretty simple, actually: Obama became the president. And the right decided from the beginning that his healthcare push (just like his stimulus bill and cap-and-trade and so on) represented creeping socialism.

Back in 2006, Romney could use healthcare to position himself as the heir to George W. Bush's "compassionate conservative" mantle: See, he would say, I found a conservative, market-friendly way to solve a problem that Democrats -- like Bill and Hillary in '94 -- tried and failed to address for decades.

But that doesn't work with Obama in the White House. Last summer and fall, Romney was able to say that his law was different from Obama's plan because Massachusetts lacked the public option that Democrats in Washington were pushing for. This was disingenuous, obviously, but at least it made for a good sound bite.

Now he can't even claim that: Despite the best efforts of liberal groups, there will be no public option in the final bill that Obama signs. So Romney is left with the right's favorite old fallback: states' rights. What I did works for my state, his new message goes, but it would be a disaster to do it nationally. (He can thank Sen. Scott Brown, who voted for RomneyCare as a Massachusetts state senator in 2006, for introducing this argument during the state's recent Senate special election.)

It's easy to snicker at Romney's healthcare problem -- just desserts for a man who has so thoroughly and shamelessly reinvented himself over the years. But it actually says more about the irrational state of today's GOP base, which is vilifying President Obama for doing almost exactly what it hailed Romney for doing just four years ago.

* Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More: Steve Kornacki
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/22/mitt_romney_health_care_hypocrisy

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 06:39 PM            

President Obama is likening his federal healthcare reform bill to the Massachusetts healthcare bill signed by former Gov. Mitt Romney. That could cause problems for Romney in 2012.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney talks to journalists about his views on healthcare reform in Washington on March 8.

By Will Buchanan, Contributor / March 31, 2010
Boston

The next presidential election is more than two years away, but healthcare reform is already causing problems for one presumed candidate – and it's not President Obama.
Skip to next paragraph

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, is trying to distance himself from the state healthcare reform overhaul that he signed in 2006. The Massachusetts bill included elements such as the individual mandate – that is, requiring people to buy insurance – which is also in the federal plan and is deeply unpopular among conservatives.

Mr. Obama has emphasized the similarities between the Massachusetts healthcare bill and his new national healthcare plan, partly to appear less radical and more bipartisan himself. In doing so, he has also made problems for Mr. Romney.

“When you actually look at the [federal] bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas," said Obama on the "Today Show" Tuesday. "I mean, a lot of commentators have said, 'You know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney passed in Massachusetts.' ”

The federal law is opposed by 8 of 10 Republicans, according to a recent CBS poll.

“The healthcare debate presents big problems for Romney," says Julian Zelizer, a political scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey. It "will be a big issue for Republicans in 2012, and Romney is not well-positioned to lead the Republican charge against Obama."

Romney has worked hard to emphasize the differences between the two healthcare bills. Last week, Romney penned a letter in National Review in which he said, “America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation – rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics.”

But Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who advised both Obama and Romney on health-insurance programs, told the Boston Globe that Romney’s healthcare reform effort as governor paved the way for national reform. "[Romney] is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform," he said.

To be sure, that comment will not be on Romney's fundraising letter. “It is ironic,” says Mr. Zelizer, “that Romney’s biggest accomplishment as governor would be his biggest liability as a candidate.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0331/Who-is-the-father-o f-healthcare-reform-Obama-or-Mitt-Romney

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 08:03 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by littlecloud:
It's not even healthcare. It's more like deathcare.

---

How is it like deathcare?

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 08:05 PM            

Repeal health care? Give up your own first!

For 2 years, GOP leaders in Congress fought tooth and nail to oppose health care reform. They did their best to keep tens of millions without coverage, decrying any effort to help citizens as "socialist," "fascist" or some other equally baffling "ist." And incredibly, they are now talking about repealing it.

And yet, when it comes to their own coverage, Republicans in Congress are not only using government-sponsored health care, they are whining about having to wait for it.

Well, four brave members of Congress are calling GOP leaders on their hypocrisy, demanding they practice what they preach, and calling on them to give up their government-sponsored health care:

Four members -- Joe Crowley (NY), Linda Sanchez (CA), Donna Edwards (MD), and Tim Ryan (OH) -- are rounding up signatures for a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Speaker-to-be John Boehner, encouraging them to press their members to refuse their federal health benefits based on the same principles underlying their opposition to health care reform.

"It is amazing that your members would complain about not having health care coverage for a few weeks, even after campaigning to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which will help provide coverage to millions of Americans who find themselves without health insurance for months or even years," the letter reads. "It begs the question: how many members of the Republican conference will be forgoing the employer-subsidized FEHBP coverage and experiencing what so many Americans find themselves forced to face? If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk."

We couldn't agree more. Write McConnell and Boehner today, and ask them if they will practice what they preach - and ask other GOP members to do the same.
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/gop_healthcare_hypocrites/index.html?rc=hlinko_1142110_GOPHealth_ad4a

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 08:49 PM            

well......

Palin vs. Obama: Death Panels

August 14, 2009
Bookmark and Share

Like many disagreements in the digital age, it all started with a post on Facebook. Last Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted a note to her Facebook page and introduced a new term to the health care debate:

Palin, Aug. 7: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care.

Unsurprisingly, the phrase "death panel" does not appear in the health care bill that passed House committees last month. And Palin’s post did not make entirely clear what she might interpret as a "death panel." Nonetheless, the phrase stuck. It skyrocketed up the Google search index and was quoted by George Stephanopoulos while interviewing former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on ABC News’ "This Week." Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa made similar claims while speaking out against "a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma” at a town hall on Wednesday.

President Obama addressed these concerns about death panels and unplugged grandmothers during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Tuesday. He said:

Obama, Aug. 11: The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for "death panels" that will basically pull the plug on grandma … this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, et cetera. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready, on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything. This is I guess where the rumor came from.

Obama is referring to Section 1233 of H.R. 3200, which is titled “Advance Care Planning Consultation.” As we explained a few weeks ago, it "would require Medicare to pay for some end-of-life planning counseling sessions with a health care practitioner." Our previous article was a response to the false claim that the health care bill would require forced counseling to push euthanasia. And it’s this provision on end-of-life counseling that’s the primary basis for Palin’s remarks.

On Aug. 12, Palin attempted to clear up her argument with a detailed Facebook post. She discussed Section 1233 and said that "it’s misleading for the President to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients." Palin goes onto argue:

Palin, Aug. 12: The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context. … These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?

The fact remains that the bill wouldn’t require patients to receive counseling sessions, nor would it require a doctor to offer one. Rather, it modifies Section 1861(s)2 of the Social Security Act, defining what services Medicare will pay for. So if a patient receives a counseling session from a doctor or health care practitioner, he or she doesn’t have to pay for it – Medicare will. As we pointed out in our earlier story, Medicare will also pay for prosthetic limbs, but that doesn’t mean that every recipient gets those, too.

And the concern that these sessions are "part of a bill whose stated purpose is ‘to reduce the growth in health care spending,’ " while true, is hardly the whole story. One of the bill’s other goals is to "provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans." The legislation is 1,017 pages long with sections that cut costs, some that increase care, and some that do both. In fact, the counseling sessions would add to government expenses since Medicare would have to reimburse doctors. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates officially that Section 1233 will cost a net total of $2.7 billion over 10 years.

Furthermore, proposals to offer reimbursement for such counseling have attracted bipartisan support. Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, a sponsor of one such measure, gave an interview to the Washington Post on August 10, in which he discussed the benefits of these counseling sessions "both for the sanity of the family and what savings the family has." Isakson also commented on the recent confusion around the issue:

Isakson, Aug. 10: I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.

Palin also attempts to buttress her case by quoting some writings by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy adviser to the president. Here she’s echoing claims made elsewhere, twisting the meaning of Emanuel’s writings and taking them out of context. We examined those claims in an Ask FactCheck item we posted earlier today, and won’t repeat the details here.

Finally, for those inclined to get their information from Facebook postings, may we suggest FactCheck.org’s own page?

Posted by Justin Bank on Friday, August 14, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Filed under The FactCheck Wire · Tagged with death panel, health care, President Obama, Sarah Palin
http://factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 08:52 PM            

47 comments
By KATE SNOW
Aug. 10, 2009
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The accusations are shocking, inflammatory and often incorrect.
VIDEO: Fact-Checking Health Care Reform
(ABCNEWS.com)

Shouts of "This is euthanasia!" and questions from angry citizens such as, "Adolph Hitler called his program the Final Solution. What will we call ours?" have taken center stage at health care town halls all across the nation.

"Right now it seems there is an intentional effort to distort what's in the legislation and that's confusing the public debate," AARP executive vice president of policy John Rother said.

At issue is a 10-page section of a 1,000-page House health care reform bill on "advanced care planning consultations."

These consultations would reimburse a doctor for talking with a patient once every five years about what kind of care they want near the end of life.

Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, called this "downright evil," and asserted the elderly would have to stand in front of a "death panel so [President Obama's] bureaucrats can decide ... whether they are worthy of health care."

So what are the facts?

The provision would create no such panel. It calls only for a "consultation between the individual and a practitioner."

Then how did this misinformation start?

It seems that it started with some remarks by former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey on "The Fred Thompson Show" radio program July 16.

"This is a vicious assault on elderly people, all to do what's in society's best interest, or your family's best, and cut your life short," she said.

Her comments had spread online and seniors started asking pointed questions.

At a health care town hall with Obama hosted by the AARP, a man said, "This is being read as saying, 'every five years, you'll be told how you can die.'"

"Well, that would be kind of morbid," the president responded.

In fact, the intent of the measure is not for doctors to tell patients what to do, but to give doctors more incentives to talk to patients about all of their options.

In La Crosse, Wis., such "end-of-life consultations" are already common because of a program put in place by a local hospital.

As a result of these consultations, LaCrosse resident Ann Kottnaur said she now knows that her mother Margaret, who has Parkinson's disease and dementia, would rather die at home than in a nursing home.

"By the time we completed it, her health had started to fail," Kottnaur said of the end-of-life care consultations.

Physicians Say These Consultations Help Families

"So we knew from a long time ago that that was her wish," Kottnaur said.

If La Crosse is any example, people do often choose limits on care for their final months. And the fact is, that saves money.

In La Crosse, medical spending in the final year of life averages $18,000. The national average is $25,000.

Opponents of the House bill argue that any focus on cost-cutting will push people toward decisions to limit care.

"There should never be any doubt as to whether your end-of-life decisions are influenced by its affect on the United States Treasury," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich.

But proponents of this measure -- and there are Republicans among them -- say that's a false argument because these are patient-driven consultations. They would be available to anyone but not mandatory, and patients would dictate what they want done, not the cost of the procedures.

Two dozen physicians were interviewed by ABC News' medical unit, and each said these kinds of consultations help families and they are happening already. This provision, they say, would only make them more widespread.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8298267&page=2

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 08:56 PM            

A new blog from The New York Times that tracks the health care debate as it unfolds.

* More Health Care Overhaul News

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Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality.

But the rumor — which has come up at Congressional town-hall-style meetings this week in spite of an avalanche of reports laying out why it was false — was not born of anonymous e-mailers, partisan bloggers or stealthy cyberconspiracy theorists.

Rather, it has a far more mainstream provenance, openly emanating months ago from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating President Bill Clinton’s health care proposals 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, New York’s lieutenant governor).

There is nothing in any of the legislative proposals that would call for the creation of death panels or any other governmental body that would cut off care for the critically ill as a cost-cutting measure. But over the course of the past few months, early, stated fears from anti-abortion conservatives that Mr. Obama would pursue a pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia agenda, combined with twisted accounts of actual legislative proposals that would provide financing for optional consultations with doctors about hospice care and other “end of life” services, fed the rumor to the point where it overcame the debate.

On Thursday, Mr. Grassley said in a statement that he and others in the small group of senators that was trying to negotiate a health care plan had dropped any “end of life” proposals from consideration.

A pending House bill has language authorizing Medicare to finance beneficiaries’ consultations with professionals on whether to authorize aggressive and potentially life-saving interventions later in life. Though the consultations would be voluntary, and a similar provision passed in Congress last year without such a furor, Mr. Grassley said it was being dropped in the Senate “because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

The extent to which it and other provisions have been misinterpreted in recent days, notably by angry speakers at recent town hall meetings but also by Ms. Palin — who popularized the “death panel” phrase — has surprised longtime advocates of changes to the health care system.

“I guess what surprised me is the ferocity, it’s much stronger than I expected,” said John Rother, the executive vice president of AARP, which is supportive of the health care proposals and has repeatedly declared the “death panel” rumors false. “It’s people who are ideologically opposed to Mr. Obama, and this is the opportunity to weaken the president.”

The specter of government-sponsored, forced euthanasia was raised as early as Nov. 23, just weeks after the election and long before any legislation had been drafted, in an outlet with opinion pages decidedly opposed to Mr. Obama, The Washington Times.

In an editorial, the newspaper reminded its readers of the Aktion T4 program of Nazi Germany in which “children and adults with disabilities, and anyone anywhere in the Third Reich was subject to execution who was blind, deaf, senile, retarded, or had any significant neurological condition.”

Noting the “administrative predilections” of the new team at the White House, it urged “anyone who sees the current climate as a budding T4 program to win the hearts and minds of deniers.”

The editorial captured broader concerns about Mr. Obama’s abortion rights philosophy held among socially conservative Americans who did not vote for him. But it did not directly tie forced euthanasia to health care plans of Mr. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

When the Democrats included money for family planning in a proposed version of the stimulus bill in January, the socially conservative George Neumayr wrote for the American Spectator: “Euthanasia is another shovel ready job for Pelosi to assign to the states. Reducing health care costs under Obama’s plan, after all, counts as economic stimulus, too — controlling life, controlling death, controlling costs.”

Ms. McCaughey, whose 1994 critique of Mr. Clinton’s plan was hotly disputed after its publication in The New Republic, weighed in around the same time.

She warned that a provision in the stimulus bill would create a bureaucracy to “monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost-effective,” was carried in a commentary she wrote for Bloomberg News that gained resonance throughout the conservative media, most notably with Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck.

The legislation did not direct the coordinator to dictate doctors’ treatments. A separate part of the law — regarding a council set up to coordinate research comparing the effectiveness of treatments — states that the council’s recommendations cannot “be construed as mandates or clinical guidelines for payment, coverage or treatment.”

But Ms. McCaughey’s article provided another opportunity for others to raise the specter of forced euthanasia. “Sometimes for the common good, you just have to say, ‘Hey, Grandpa, you’ve had a good life,’ ” Mr. Beck said.

The syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas wrote, “No one should be surprised at the coming embrace of euthanasia.” The Washington Times editorial page reprised its reference to the Nazis, quoting the Aktion T4 program: “It must be made clear to anyone suffering from an incurable disease that the useless dissipation of costly medications drawn from the public store cannot be justified.”

The notion was picked up by various conservative groups, but still, as Mr. Obama and Congress remained focused on other matters, it did not gain wide attention. Former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, an advocate for the health care proposals, said he was occasionally confronted with the “forced euthanasia” accusation at forums on the plans, but came to see it as an advantage. “Almost automatically you have most of the audience on your side,” Mr. Daschle said. “Any rational normal person isn’t going to believe that assertion.”

But as Congress developed its legislation this summer, critics seized on provisions requiring Medicare financing for “end of life” consultations, bringing the debate to a peak. To David Brock, a former conservative journalist who once impugned the Clintons but now runs a group that monitors and defends against attacks on liberals, the uproar is a reminder of what has changed — the creation of groups like his — and what has not.

“In the 90s, every misrepresentation under the sun was made about the Clinton plan and there was no real capacity to push back,” he said. “Now, there is that capacity.”

Still, one proponent of the euthanasia theory, Mr. Neumayr, said he saw no reason to stop making the claim.

“I think a government-run plan that is administered by politicians and bureaucrats who support euthanasia is inevitably going to reflect that view,” he said, “and I don’t think that’s a crazy leap.”

Robert Pear contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 15, 2009
An article on Friday about the origins of the false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored panels to decide which patients were worthy of living referred imprecisely to the stance of The Washington Times, which shortly after the election published an editorial comparing some positions of the incoming administration to the euthanasia policies of the Third Reich. In describing the newspaper as “an outlet decidedly opposed to Mr. Obama,” the article was referring to its opinion pages, not to its news pages.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/health/policy/14panel.html

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No..I am not a Virgo.

posted January 17, 2011 09:03 PM            

...and I still want the Health Care law, which I view as unconstitutional, repealed.

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted November 18, 2016 11:29 PM            

If you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor.