Michael Ramirez's preview of Obama's speech tonight...

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Obama behaves like a two year old child...

Obama's First Miracle - he conveniently found savings to pay for National Healthcare!

Obama's Healthcare Plan will be one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated upon the American People.

from Yahoo News
by Josh Gerstein
June 13, 2009

President Barack Obama says he's now found savings that will pay almost all the costs of a massive overhaul of America's health care system.

Obama on Saturday is announcing an additional $313 billion in new proposed savings that he says would bring the total funding available for his top-priority health insurance reform to nearly $950 billion over 10 years.

White House officials insisted the new savings were rock-solid, but also acknowledged they had yet to settle on a specific mechanism to achieve lower prescription drug costs that make up nearly one-quarter of the new savings.

“Any honest accounting must prepare for the fact that health care reform will require additional costs in the short term in order to reduce spending in the long term,” Obama says in his weekly radio and Internet address. “Today, I am announcing an additional $313 billion in savings that will rein in unnecessary spending, and increase efficiency and the quality of care.”

The new proposals from Obama came as the drive for health care reform reaches a pivotal juncture in Congress. On Monday, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to receive Congressional Budget Office estimates on a slew of health-care options. On Wednesday, the committee is expected to unveil proposed legislation.

In advance of those milestones, the White House was moving aggressively to counter public criticism that funding plans for the health reform effort are unrealistic, particularly in the face of an expected 10-year pricetag of $1 trillion or more. Some analysts have faulted the White House for being overly optimistic about savings and tone-deaf to which tax-raising proposals are likely to fly in Congress.

In his address Saturday, Obama refers to a 10-year total of more than $600 billion in “savings” for health care. However, he does not explain in his latest comments that, under his revised budget released last month, $326 billion of that amount would come from tax hikes on Americans making over $250,000 a year, “loophole closers,” and higher fees for some government services.

In a conference call with reporters Friday, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said the latest announcement signaled that the White House had met its obligation to identify funding sources for a broad-based effort to make health insurance more affordable and more widely available.

“We are making good on this promise to fully finance health care reform over the next decade,” Orszag declared.

The bulk of the new $313 billion in savings would come from cutting or reducing the growth of payments to hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers and laboratories — though the major cuts don't target doctors, Orszag said.

Over the next decade, $110 billion is slated to come from reducing reimbursements to take account of what Orszag described as the ability of providers to improve their efficiency. “Health care services should be able to achieve and do achieve productivity improvements over time,” he said. According to a fact sheet released by the White House, future increases in such Medicare payments would be reduced based on an assumption that health care providers achieve half the productivity increases seen elsewhere in the economy. The budget official said the reductions would take place even if providers failed to garner the projected efficiencies.

Another $106 billion would come from cuts in so-called disproportionate share payments the federal government makes to hospitals with large numbers of uninsured patients. “As the ranks of uninsured decline under health reform, those payments become less necessary,” Orszag said.

About $75 billion is slated to come from lower payments for prescription drugs. However, Orszag said the White House was “in discussions with stakeholders over the best way of achieving that $75 billion.”

Notwithstanding that ambiguity, Orszag asserted that the White House had put forward $950 billion in budgetary offsets that could be use to fund health reform. He called the proposals "hard" and "scoreable," meaning that they were sufficiently certain and specific to pass muster with CBO officials who formally tally the cost of budget items.

Asked about the discrepancy, Orszag said, “There’s been continuous skepticism that we will come forward with detail….The detail on the $75 billion for prescription drugs will be forthcoming in the very near future and I will rest my reputation as a former CBO director on the fact that there are multiple ways in which those savings can be achieved and we are committed to achieving that level of savings in this package.”

There were signs that the announcement of the additional $313 billion of savings may have been rushed. In addition to the vagueness about the $75 billion in lower drug costs, the White House’s health care reform coordinator, Nancy-Ann DeParle, did not join a conference call with reporters to announce the new proposals. Her presence had been advertised in advance, but a spokesman said she was in another meeting and could not participate.

The cuts and savings are likely to engender warnings from providers that de-facto rationing will occur as patients in some areas find themselves unable to find providers willing to perform lab tests, X-rays and the like, due to the lower reimbursement rates.

Hospitals are also likely to protest that the disproportionate share payments, which are targeted for cuts of 75 percent, are vital to maintaining hospitals in costly urban centers, and to keeping teaching hospitals viable.

“It is unlikely to be an exact match on a hospital-by-hospital basis but what we believe will occur is that the remaining DSH payments that will still exist can be better targeted to the hospitals most in need,” Orszag said.

Hey Obama: Americans Say Your Takeover Of GM Sucks!

image by rees

from Fox News
June 11, 2009

Most Americans are unhappy with the actions the federal government has taken with General Motors, and people are uncertain about GM's future -- even with the government's help, according to a FOX News poll released Thursday.

Considering economic conditions overall, most people say things haven't been this bad since the Great Depression. Views are split, however, over whether the economy is getting better or worse.

By 58 percent to 38 percent voters across the country say they disapprove of the government takeover and majority ownership stake in General Motors. Majorities of Republicans (79 percent) and independents (59 percent) think it was a bad move, as well as a sizable minority of Democrats (39 percent).

And by an 8 percentage point margin slightly more Americans think the government should have let the market decide GM's fate (52 percent) than believe it was in the country's best interest to save the car maker (44 percent).

A majority of Democrats (62 percent) support the government intervening in GM, while majorities of Republicans (72 percent) and independents (54 percent) back letting market forces decide.

Does the government takeover mean GM will get back on track? When asked to look five years down the road, about half of Americans think the company will be profitable (22 percent) or breaking even (32 percent). Others are more pessimistic, including about one in five (21 percent) who think GM will be out of business, and 17 percent think it will still be losing money.

Among Democrats, who are more likely to support the government takeover, nearly a third think GM will either be gone (15 percent) or still showing red ink (13 percent).

Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from June 9 to June 10. The poll has a 3-point error margin.

Labor unions have been front and center in the government's rescue of GM -- and Chrysler as well. The largest number of Americans -- 43 percent -- think labor unions have too much influence on the Obama administration, 29 percent say the right amount and 12 percent too little influence.

Economic Conditions

The public is split on how things are going today, as about equal numbers say the economy is getting better (40 percent) as say it is getting worse (42 percent). Even this question reveals a partisan divide: Half of Democrats (50 percent) say things are getting better -- that's almost double the number of Republicans (27 percent) who feel the same way. A 57 percent majority of Republicans say things are getting worse. Independents split: 41 percent better and 41 percent worse.

Similarly, when asked if the government stimulus spending is working, 46 percent of Americans say yes, while almost as many people -- 39 percent -- say no. Three months ago sentiments were reversed, as 38 percent thought government actions were working and 44 percent disagreed (3-4 March 2009).

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) think the country is in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Do the tough times make you more appreciative for what you have? You bet -- 84 percent say they feel more grateful these days. Only 9 percent are "angry" they don't have as much as they used to have.

Among the car companies tested, Ford -- which has not taken government bailout money -- has the highest favorable rating at 72 percent, followed by Honda at 69 percent favorable. Just under half of Americans have a positive view of General Motors (48 percent) and Chrysler (46 percent).

Click to read the rest of the article and the comments

New Chairman of GM: "I don't know Jack about cars!" - he actually said "anything"

This should make the taxpayers who involunteerily invested billons into GM, feel good about the odds that GM might actually recover. Nice job Obama! Way to install the right people into the critical positions to give GM it's best chance to survive. You have your car czar who doesn't know Jack, choose a chairman of the board who also doesn't know Jack.

Hey Obama: You, the new GM CEO and the new Chairman of the Board are all morons. Good luck on your future success.
Rees

from Cheat-Seeking Missiles
by Laer
June 10, 2009

"I don’t know anything about cars.” - Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., Newly
Annointed Chairman Of GM

I really can’t believe I’m in America, reading in American media what an American president is doing to an American enterprise. But I am. It is true. The government has named a new chairman for General Motors. Not the GM board of directors, not the shareholders, but Steven Rattner, Obama’s car czar, who knows about as much about cars as the new chairman, Edward Whitacre.

This is far more radical than anything I thought Obama would be able to pull off, even in eight years, let alone 14 weeks. Following on yesterday’s SCOTUS decision which said, basically, a contract is no longer a contract so investors can expect no protections, the critical condition of glorious American capitalism could not be more apparent. I worry that it will not survive until 2010’s mid-term elections.

Whitacre was picked for two reasons. The published one is that he guided AT&T through the transition from land-based wire telephone carrier to a leader in the wireless industry. The Obamaites see a similar future for GM, with it transforming from a market-driven car company to a government-driven car company, manufacturing cars Big Brother wants us to drive, whether we want to or not.

The unspoken reason for his selection is because Whitacre can be counted on to do what government tells him to do, as was evident when he quickly (and rightly) acquiesced to government pressure to open AT&T’s hardware to the feds for post-9/11 surveillance purposes. Not all telcom CEOs folded so quickly to government pressure, and since folding to government pressure is what’s in store for GM, Whitacre will make an ideal Obama-era chairman for the company.

The appointment should infuriate the Left. Besides being a lackey to George Bush’s gestapo security machine, Whitacre received a peon-snubbing $158.8 million retirement package from AT&T and was involved in some pretty brutal corporate downsizings (probably in no small part due to shifting jobs overseas). Oh, and let’s not forget that under his tenure AT&T censored (oops!) a Pearl Jam concert right when the band was blasting George Bush.

But Daily Kos has nothing posted on him as of his hour. Democratic Underground? Mum. [By the way, I typed "democraticunderground" instead of "democraticunderground.com," and was redirected to one of those stupid sponsored-link pages. Guess who came out on top? Barbara Boxer!] As for Huffington Post, which as I predicted in a tweet earlier today leads with how Homeland Security foresaw today’s attack on the Holocaust Museum in its report on right-wing radicalism, it also couldn’t find a reason to cover - let alone criticize - Whitacre’s appointment.

Of course not. They know what’s going on. Their long-awaited revolution is happening and they don’t want to crow about it too early because suddenly they’re very concerned about the enemy getting wind of our intentions. Not al-Qaeda - tell them anything - they don’t want their enemy, normal Americans, to wake up to what’s going on. No, they want to be much further down the road to economic ruin in the name of wealth redistribution before they haul out the red flags and have a victory parade.
Click to read the comments and other excellent articles at Cheat-Seeking Missiles

Fed threatened bank CEO - Obama Thugocracy

image by rees

from Yahoo News
By Anne Flaherty
Associated Press Writer
Jun 10, 2009


WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve threatened to force the ouster of Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis if he didn't follow through with plans to buy Merrill Lynch & Co., Republicans said Wednesday after reviewing internal documents.

Republicans also said there was evidence that the government tried to restrict information related to the merger from being publicly released.

However, none of the documents showed that the government explicitly instructed Bank of America to hide Merrill Lynch's losses from shareholders, they said.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating claims that top government officials, including then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, urged Lewis to go through with the acquisition and not disclose to shareholders the details of Merrill Lynch's deteriorating financial state.

Lewis was scheduled to testify on Thursday before the panel, which is chaired by Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y.

Bank of America has received $45 billion from the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. As part of that money, the bank received $20 billion in January after Lewis requested it to help offset mounting losses at Merrill Lynch.

According to an internal memo prepared by the committee's Republican staff, Paulson and Bernanke "put a gun to the head" of Lewis and Bank of America's board of directors to force the merger even though Lewis "felt it was his duty to his shareholders to try his luck in the legal system and back out of the deal."

As proof, Republicans cite several documents including an e-mail by an employee at the Richmond Federal Reserve who said Bernake had made it clear that if Bank of America backed out and needed financial assistance, "management is gone."

Just a few weeks after the deal was completed, Bank of America's fourth-quarter earnings report showed the hit its balance sheet took on the Merrill Lynch transaction, making Lewis the target of shareholder anger.

In January, Bank of America reported a $2.39 billion fourth-quarter loss and Merrill Lynch disclosed a loss of more than $15 billion.

Click to read the rest of the article and the comments

More Empty Words and Political Showmanship

This is an excellent article from America's Right detailing Obama's absurd announcement admonishing fiscal restraint. As they say, you can't make this stuff up.
Rees

from America's Right
by Jeff Schreiber
June 9, 2009

I heard him make the announcement today, and tried as hard as I could not to laugh or cry.

What position is Barack Obama in to preach fiscal responsibility and restraint? My goodness, the hypocrisy is so gosh-darned thick here that even Al Gore, riding in his carbon-spewing private jet on the way to a "climate change" conference, is likely shaking his head.

Furthermore, what the AP piece doesn't seem to mention is that Congress already has a "PAYGO" rule in place, and has had that rule in place since 2007. The problem, contends the Heritage Foundation, is that it is "merely a congressional rule" and therefore can be easily waived by elected officials. In fact, such a waiver happened recently -- for Barack Obama's so-called "stimulus" bill.

From that same February 26, 2009 Heritage piece, a list of six problems with PAYGO:

•PAYGO Would Not Decrease the Growth of Federal Spending. PAYGO is not designed to reduce federal spending. It is not even designed to slow the growth rate of spending. It only limits the creation of new entitlement benefits above the spending growth baseline. In fact, entitlement spending grew faster after statutory PAYGO took effect in 1991.[2]

•PAYGO Exempts Discretionary Spending. Discretionary spending programs--which comprise nearly 40 percent of the federal budget--are totally exempt from PAYGO rules. In other words, Congress could provide unlimited budget increases to most defense, education, health research, justice, international, environmental, veterans' health, homeland security, and housing programs without triggering PAYGO. This loophole is a major flaw that substantially weakens PAYGO.

•PAYGO Exempts Current Entitlement Benefits. Under PAYGO, current entitlement programs can continue to grow on autopilot. Only newly created entitlement benefits must be offset. In short, PAYGO would not prevent (a) Social Security from growing 6 percent annually; (b) Medicare and Medicaid from growing 7 percent annually; and (c) Nominal entitlement spending from nearly doubling over the next decade. PAYGO could theoretically slow down the creation of any new entitlements. Yet the nation's main budgetary challenges stem from the $44 trillion unfunded obligation from Social Security and Medicare, as well as the growing costs of current entitlements like Medicaid. PAYGO would do nothing to reduce the growth rate of these programs.

•PAYGO Employs a Double Standard That Raises Taxes. Every few years, Congress must review and renew most entitlement programs and many tax cuts. PAYGO sensibly says that renewing an existing entitlement program is not "new" spending and therefore does not need to be offset. However, PAYGO applies a different standard to tax cuts. It classifies tax cut extensions as "new" tax cuts that violate PAYGO and must be offset. This makes no sense. PAYGO was intended to block the creation of new policies that increase the deficit. Simply keeping current tax policies in place should not be treated as "new" tax cuts. Additionally, the blatant double standard of allowing entitlement spending policies but not tax policies to be extended constitutes a major bias towards higher taxes and spending. For instance, PAYGO allows the extension of expiring SCHIP and farm subsidy laws, but it does not allow the extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts or the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) to be patched without offsets. Even President Obama has criticized this double standard, and Congress should eliminate this baseline disparity from any PAYGO statute.

•Previous PAYGO Statutes Were Never Enforced--Even Once. Congress already had a PAYGO statute from 1991 to 2002. But this law was never enforced. Over the statute's 12 years, Congress enacted more than $700 billion in new entitlement spending and tax cuts--and then enacted legislation cancelling every single sequestration. Even if Congress had allowed sequestration, they had already enacted legislation exempting 97 percent of all entitlement spending--all but $31 billion--from being part of any sequestration. The law was practically designed to fail. Entitlement spending actually grew faster during the 12 years of PAYGO (1991-2002) than in the 12 previous years (1980-1991). The budget did temporarily achieve balance during that period. Yet PAYGO had very little to do with it. The budget was balanced by the combination of the dot com bubble revenue boom, defense savings after the Cold War ended, and declining net interest costs.

•Current PAYGO Rules Are Not Enforced. Congress has operated under a PAYGO rule since 2007. In that short period of time, Congress has already bypassed PAYGO to: (a) Enact a stimulus bill that cost $479 billion in new entitlements and tax cuts; (b) Enact a veterans' education entitlement bill costing $63 billion; (c) Enact a student loan expansion costing $15 billion; (d) Twice patch the AMT; and (e) Enact SCHIP and farm bills that used blatant gimmicks to hide tens of billions of dollars in new entitlement benefits.

This is not a fix. This isn't even substantial enough to qualify as a gimmick. Our spendthrift president calling a press conference and advocating PAYGO is merely an act of political gamesmanship born from West Wing worry about the perception of this administration's lack of fiscal restraint and meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator in terms of those who pay attention to the goings-on in Washington, D.C. It's meant for a soundbite to be heard by clueless people from coast to coast as they wait for the five-day forecast from their local news station. It's meant for a headline in Obama-friendly newspapers to be read by people, through the plexi-glass of the vending machine, as they wait on a train or bus or traffic light.

Then again, how is this any different than anything done by this administration so far?
Click to read the comments and other great articles at America's Right

Obama Triples Deficit then pitches pay-as-you-go plan! - What BS! - Has he no shame?

Obama more than triples the deficit, then pretends to be innocent of the whole process by offering this self-righteous "if you irresponsible people are going to continue to spend foolishly, I'm going to have to impose on you a "pay-as-you-go plan" to reign things in. He is unbelievable. He truly does believe that the majority of American voters are absolutely stupid. He'll find out how stupid we are all in 2010 and 2012.
Rees

Obama pitches pay-as-you-go plan for Congress
from Yahoo News
by Ben Feller
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday challenged Congress to pay for new increases in federal benefit programs as it goes rather than sink the nation deeper into a debt, calling it a matter of public responsibility. Republicans lashed back that Obama is no voice of fiscal restraint as the deficit soars.

The president's plan would require Congress to pay for new entitlement spending, such as health care, by raising taxes or coming up with budget cuts — a "pay-as-you-go" system that would have the force of law. Under the proposal, if new spending or tax reductions are not offset, there would be automatic cuts in so-called mandatory programs — although Social Security payments and some other programs would be exempt.

Not noted by the president: Tuesday's plan is a watered-down version of the so-called "PAYGO" rules proposed just last month in his own budget plan.

That version would have required, on average, all affected legislation to be paid for in the very first year. The new plan only requires such legislation to be financed over the coming decade. That mirrors congressional rules and reflects the likelihood that health care reform will add to the deficit in the early years.

Obama said the principle is simple: Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar somewhere else.

"It is no coincidence that this rule was in place when we moved from record deficits to record surpluses in the 1990s — and that when this rule was abandoned, we returned to record deficits that doubled the national debt," Obama said, flanked at the White House by supportive Democratic lawmakers.

"Entitlement increases and tax cuts need to be paid for," he said. "They're not free, and borrowing to finance them is not a sustainable long-term policy."

Republican leaders, critical of the Obama-championed $787 billion stimulus package and other deficit spending, called the president disingenuous.

"It's as if the administration and these Democrat leaders are living in an alternate universe," said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia. "The quickest way to save money is to stop recklessly spending it."

The pay-as-you-go rules would not apply to discretionary spending — the portion that Congress decides how to spend each year — which accounts for almost 40 percent of the budget, said Peter Orszag, the administration's budget director.

Obama's call for binding legislation comes as a reward to moderate-to-conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats who are big believers in pay-as-you go. Their votes were crucial to passing a congressional budget blueprint that generally follows Obama's budget.

The House and Senate already have their own PAYGO rules, but have routinely found ways around them. For example, a bill to effectively double GI Bill education benefits was enacted last year because of a loophole in congressional rules.

Obama's "PAYGO" plan would also require future tax cuts to be financed by tax increases elsewhere in the code, though exceptions are made for extending President George W. Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, as well as other tax cuts that are scheduled to expire.

The federal deficit is on pace to explode past $1.8 trillion this year, more than four times last year's all-time high.

The deficit figures flow from the deep recession, the Wall Street bailout and the cost of the economic stimulus bill. Obama has defended the massive stimulus plan as essential to helping pump some life back in the economy, one that is still shedding jobs but showing more signs of life in recent weeks.

"The fact is, there are few who aren't distressed by deficits," Obama said. He said restoring a pay-as-you-go method under law would force lawmakers to deal not just with the politics and crises of the day, but also remain fixed on the nation's long-term financial health.
Click to read the article and the comments

Urkelnomics, Oops, Obamanomics Creating MORE Unemployment

from Flopping Aces
June 7, 2009
Posted by: Mike's America

So much for the promise of three million new or “saved” jobs!

Readers may recall that the Congressional Budget Office warned in February that passing the massive stimulus bill might actually damage the economy and in many ways was worse than doing nothing.

Democrats who cited the CBO as the gold standard of economic analysis when it criticized Bush Administration forecasts were quick to dismiss the CBO report.

Guess who was right?

Christina Romer, who now chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisors, put out this report as part of the incoming Administrations forecast of how Obama’s plan would save jobs. The following chart is taken from page 5 of the pdf of that report, with the actual unemployment numbers added in red by Innocent Bystander.


Sure does look like Obama’s plan is worse than doing nothing!

What’s worse is that the same bunch who brought you this obvious fiasco have published budget and spending forecasts that nearly all independent analysts criticize for being hopelessly flawed. The massive deficits, already at levels higher than at any time in our nation’s history, will cause even greater economic disruption.

Yes, Rosy Scenario is back in town in D.C. but she brought along her brother, Painful Truth. And the painful reality of the Obama Administration’s sheer incompetence on economic matters is already abundantly clear to the millions who are out of work due to Obamanomics.
Click to read the article and comments

Obama wants a government takeover of American health-care, plain and simple

There’s No Doubt Now
from The National Review
by James C. Capretta

Those outside groups and interested parties who have held their fire in the health-care debate while waiting for the details to emerge — well, there really is no excuse now. Everyone should know what is coming.

On Tuesday, President Obama sent a letter to Senators Kennedy and Baucus outlining what kind of bill he wants and will support. And what he wants is a government takeover of American health-care, plain and simple.

Sure, the letter’s only three pages long (that constitutes a “plan” in this administration). But it was probably written to give the senators some political cover for the more controversial provisions they plan to pass, and thus it contains just enough coded language to confirm that all involved are planning to hand full control over American health-care to the federal government.

For starters, President Obama unequivocally endorses the creation of a new government-run insurance option for working age Americans and their families. For weeks, Senator Baucus has hinted that, well, maybe such an option isn’t necessary. That led many on the left to put pressure back on Democrats in Congress to deliver what they had promised — or else. With the president’s re-endorsement of the idea (he supported it during his campaign), it is now inconceivable that the Democrats won’t include a heavily price-controlled government-run plan in the bill they try to pass.

The Obama letter also endorses a so-called “individual mandate” — a requirement that everyone enroll in some kind of insurance or pay a penalty. During the 2008 campaign, then-Senator Obama made a big deal of opposing this idea — which was the centerpiece of Senator Hillary Clinton’s reform agenda. Now, however, he has flip-flopped — as Politico reported — and endorsed it, so long as “hardship” cases are exempt.

The individual mandate has long been accepted orthodoxy among most Congressional Democrats. For them, the real goal is to be able to say they passed “universal coverage,” and the only way they can say that they did is if they make those who would opt out enroll in something anyway.

Moreover, the individual mandate is the excuse for everything else they want to do. The government can’t make people buy insurance if they can’t afford it, so there needs to be an expansive new health-insurance entitlement program (Sen. Kennedy’s outline would allow everyone up to 500 percent of the poverty line qualify). And if there’s a mandate, the government must define what qualifies. And on and on.

The primary obstacle in the way of rapid passage of the emerging Democratic plan remains cost. The bill will be enormously expensive, at a time when the federal government is already running massive budget deficits. Despite all of the talk of “bending the cost curve,” the Democrats have offered nothing that would put a dent in rising costs. And many rank and file Democrats are likely to balk at Senatir Baucus’s push to tax employer-paid premiums.

So what’s their way out? A gimmick, of course.

The Obama letter floats the idea which has been making the rounds among Democrats for weeks. Instead of making tough budgetary choices themselves, they are now hoping they can simply require some unelected, unaccountable advisory group — the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac) — to find the savings for them.

This is the worst of all possible worlds. Call it the black box of government-driven rationing of care. MedPac — or any other federal agency for that matter — would be working from the same laundry list of price-controls and fee cuts that Congress has always used to try to control costs in governmental health programs. The idea that somehow an existing or new agency will discover new ways to painlessly reduce costs is a fiction. They would end up doing what every other government around the world has done — impose artificial cost limits on providers of services, which will reduce the number of willing suppliers and lead to waiting lists and queues.

Perhaps in this sense President Obama’s letter is a blessing. It is now much clearer how the Democrats plan to impose bureaucratic rationing of care on the public. This should become the basis for determined opposition, inside and outside of Congress.

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Nationalized Healthcare...Making his emphatic point as always! - It's great

from Drinking With Bob

THE DEATH OF U.S. HEALTHCARE - it will be gone forever!

from Dick Morris.com
by Dick Morris
May 17. 2009

Published on TheHill.com
on May 12, 2009

When all of America’s top health insurers and providers met at the White House this week and pledged to save $2 trillion over the next decade in health costs, they were pledging to sabotage our medical care. The blunt truth, which everybody agreed to keep quiet, is that the only way to reduce these costs is to ration healthcare, thereby destroying our system.

Here’s why:

• Essential to any cost reduction is a cut in doctors’ fees. Congress is trying to cut Medicare fees by 21 percent. But cuts in fees and doctors’ incomes will just discourage people from entering the profession and those already in it from practicing. The limited number of doctors and nurses in the United States is the key constraint on the availability of healthcare. Our national inventory of 800,000 doctors is growing at only about 1 percent a year (18,000 med school graduates annually minus retirements), while the nurse population is stagnant at 1.4 million. To stretch these limited resources so that they can treat 50 million more people is possible only through the most severe kind of rationing.

• As in Canada, the best way to cut medical costs is to refrain from using the best drugs to treat cancer and other illnesses, thereby economizing at the expense of patients’ lives. Forty-four percent of the drugs approved by the Canadian health authorities for use in their country are not allowed by the healthcare system due to their high cost. As a result, death rates from cancer are 16 percent higher in Canada than in the United States. We will pay for the attempt to save $2 trillion with our lives. (And remember, one cannot opt out of the Canadian system and pay for the medications out of pocket.)

• The only real way to save money on the scale projected is to ration healthcare services. Optimists say that this can be achieved by increased use of preventive care. But the Canadian experience indicates that when government — or its satellite private insurance providers — ration healthcare, they cut preventive care first. In Canada, colonoscopies are so rationed that the colon cancer rate is 25 percent higher than in the U.S. (even though Canada has a much smaller proportion of poor people, whose frequently bad diets make them more prone to the disease).

Obama’s pretension that nobody will find changes in his or her current health insurance plans except for a magical reduction in their cost by $2,500 a year is a fool’s proposition. Private health insurers will be no more private than TARP-funded banks or government-subsidized car companies are in Obama’s America. They will be controlled by government healthcare planners who will approve treatments, limit drug use, hold down medical incomes and bring their cost-cutting programs to bear. Inevitably, their ax will fall on the oldest and the sickest among us, those least “deserving” of our newly limited and, under Obama’s program, diminishing healthcare resources.

The other radical changes Obama is bringing about in our nation can always be reversed. New taxes can be repealed or lowered. That which was nationalized can be privatized. Government which has grown can be cut. But once the healthcare system is extended to cover everyone, with no commensurate increase in the resources available, the change will be forever. The vicious cycle of cuts in medical resources and in the number of doctors and nurses will doom healthcare in this country. This wanton destruction will not be reversible by any bill or program. A crucial part of our quality of life — the best healthcare in the world — will be gone forever.

Politically, voters will feel the impact of these “reforms” very quickly. When they face rejection or limitation at the hands of the bureaucrats, they will quickly understand that the their options have become limited. Just as in the 1990s, when HMOs first became universal, the patient outrage will create a political force all its own and those who foisted this brave new world on the American people will be in their crosshairs.
Click to read other articles by Dick Morris

If It Is Good, It Is Done By Me - Obama The Narcissist

from INSTAPUNDIT.COM
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds at 5:56 pm
May 11, 2009

KEITH HENNESSEY: The President’s Silly Health-Care Announcement.

“The President is attempting to claim credit for savings that (a) do not yet exist, (b) are not backed up by any specific changes in industry practices or government policies, and (c) are related to him only in that the groups announced they were adopting his quantitative goal. For all three of these reasons, the President’s claim that these savings will materialize is wildly unrealistic, and it is absurd to attach a per-family savings number to it."

Here's a portion of the above referenced article. It's worth the time to read.

The President spoke about health care in the cross-hall today, flanked by the heads of several major health lobbying groups (”trade associations,” in Washington vernacular):

• hospitals — the American Hospital Association (”AHA”);
• doctors — the American Medical Association (”AMA”);
• insurance companies — America’s Health Insurance Plans (”A-Hip”);
• the drug manufacturers — Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (”Pharma”);
• the medical device manufacturers — Advanced Medical Technology Association (”AdvaMed”); and
• health care worker unions — the Service Employees International Union (”SEIU”).

The President announced,

[T]hese groups are coming together to make an unprecedented commitment. Over the next 10 years — from 2010 to 2019 — they are pledging to cut the rate of growth of national health care spending by 1.5 percentage points each year — an amount that’s equal to over $2 trillion.

This is one of the sillier White House announcements I have seen. Let me draw a sports parallel:
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