The American Spectator : Live or Let Die

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Live or Let Die

By Philip Klein on 8.14.09 @ 6:09AM

The “death panel” debate obscures a deeper ethical discussion that both liberals and conservatives would rather avoid.

Somewhere in between warnings of a “death panel” and promises of a utopian medical future, there is an honest discussion to be had about ethics, human mortality, and the role of government in our nation’s health care system.

A provision within the House Democrats’ health care bill that would create a new Medicare benefit paying for senior citizens to talk to a doctor or nurse about how to prepare for end-of-life medical decisions has emerged as one of the most controversial elements of the legislation. But before exploring the broader implications, it’s important to be clear about what the notorious section 1233 of the “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” does and does not say. Despite claims to the contrary, the provision (described in detail on pages 424 to 434 of the bill under the section “Advanced Care Planning Consultation”) does not create a “death panel,” mention euthanasia, or mandate that senior citizens participate in counseling sessions.

Instead, the bill would reimburse Medicare recipients for one session every five years, and potentially more if their health deteriorates considerably or they are admitted into a nursing facility. Such sessions, as described in the bill, would cover topics as benign as explaining the type of services that are available under Medicare, to thornier issues, such as living wills and creating medical orders that would specify what type of treatment patients would want to receive to sustain their lives if they can no longer communicate their wishes.

Seniors would be given the option of creating a medical order that would describe, “the intensity of medical intervention if the patient is pulse less, apneic, or has serious cardiac or pulmonary problems; the individual’s desire regarding transfer to a hospital or remaining at the current care setting; the use of antibiotics; and the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration.”

Despite the ominous sound, there is a pragmatic basis for such a provision. In 2005, the Terri Schiavo tragedy became a heated national political issue, because an accident left the Florida woman incapable of expressing whether she wanted to be kept alive with the aid of life-sustaining technology, and there wasn’t any clear record of what her own wishes would have been. This uncertainty led to a dispute among her relatives that sent the issue into the courts, and ultimately, the halls of Congress and the White House. While Schiavo was a young woman when she suffered her accident, at least conceptually, the controversial provision of the House legislation seeks to avoid such circumstances among the elderly by paying for them, if they choose, to learn more about how they can spell out their wishes in advance.

With that said, the provision has to be viewed within the larger context of the changes that President Obama envisions for the health care system as a whole. Though he denies it now, Obama was once a proud advocate of a single-payer system in which government is the sole purchaser of health care. Throughout the health care debate, he has cited erroneous statistics to promote the idea that government-run systems get better value for their health care spending. And through a web of subsidies, mandates, regulations, and the creation of a government-run plan, Obama hopes to make America function more like the foreign health care systems he prefers. Those systems do not control costs by using magic wands, but by rationing care to the sick.

Britain, for instance, has a panel of experts called National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence that performs cost-benefit analysis to help determine what sorts of treatment the government will pay for, and for whom. According to a report in the New York Times, NICE “has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.”

NICE was one of the inspirations for Tom Daschle’s vision for a Federal Health Board, an idea Obama praised before originally tapping Daschle to lead his health care push. The idea for an expert panel has already manifested itself in the form of Obama’s Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research, created by the economic stimulus bill.

While Obama argues that his council will just be providing expert research to doctors and patients, if you read Tom Daschle’s book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, in the context of describing a Federal Health Board, he outlined how government could compel wider adoption of such a body’s recommendations. For instance, Daschle explained, there could be a requirement that all government programs would have to abide by its recommendations and that requirement could extend to any private insurer participating in the government health insurance exchange. And as Daschle wrote, “Congress could opt to go further with the Board’s recommendations. It could, for example, link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board’s recommendations.”

And while the bill doesn’t include any provision about euthanasia, which remains illegal in almost every state, the idea of government subsidized suicide is not as far-fetched as it sounds. In Oregon, for instance, the state’s health care plan sent a letter declining to pay for cancer patient Barbara Wagner’s expensive chemotherapy drug, but offered to cover the cost of doctor-assisted suicide. This was not an isolated incident, as similar letters were sent to terminally ill patients throughout the state last year.

This, of course, is the inevitable result of thinking of health care as a collective good that should be allocated by the state. If health care operates on a global budget, then it becomes a zero-sum game in which providing more care to one patient means depriving another patient of care. And suddenly life and death health decisions evolve from something that is between you, your faith, your family, and your doctor, into highly-politicized issues that are the business of government and your fellow taxpayers.

Instead of being honest about the natural tradeoffs involved in trying to “bend the health care cost curve,” Obama has promised Americans a utopia in which everybody is covered, quality improves, our debt actually decreases over time, only the very rich have to pay a tiny amount of extra taxes, and there will be no rationing of care. As Obama promised this week while in full salesman mode, “You will have not only the care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you — only if we get health care reform.”

But Obama’s disingenuousness doesn’t get conservatives completely off the hook, either. The right has been pushing back hard against the specter of government cutting off Medicare beneficiaries in their final days. Even if the House legislation did make that happen, however, is it clearly more ethical for conservatives to argue that we should dedicate an effectively unlimited amount of resources to treat those who are terminally ill or in a comatose state, while depriving others who are not old or sick or poor enough of any form of government benefits?

It’s an ugly issue that nobody wants to bring up precisely because of the reaction we’re seeing right now. But the dilemma will only become more pronounced with entitlement spending out of control, the development of life-preserving technologies expanding, and Baby Boomers set to retire. The reality is that we do not have a free market for health care in the United States and that government is responsible for 46 percent of health care spending. Nobody wants to be the heartless person who puts a price on human life and argues that we cannot afford to give a patient treatment that will mean the difference between death and survival. And certainly, nobody wants the person making that decision to be a government bureaucrat. But if conservatives believe in providing unlimited end-of-life care, then it necessarily means some combination of higher taxes, greater debt, or substantial cuts in other government services. In the coming years and decades, this reality will create friction between the desire of conservatives to protect human life in all of its forms and to limit the growth of government.

In that sense, the debate we’re having over the implications of end-of-life counseling is just a harbinger of problems to come, which Obamacare would only exacerbate.

About the Author

Philip Klein is The American Spectator’s Washington correspondent. You can follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/Philipaklein

Letter to the Editor View all comments (170) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

De-population program| 8.14.09 @ 6:37AM

Breaking NewsCameron Defends NHS Amid US Healthcare Row
Patients 'denied rare cancer drugs'
3 hours 4 mins ago

Buzz Up! Print Story More than 1,000 patients suffering from rarer forms of cancer may have been denied potentially life-saving drugs, a report has revealed. Skip related content
The Rarer Cancers Forum found patients faced a "postcode lottery" when requesting drugs which had not been licensed for their condition, with many being refused treatment.

The charity described the variations as "unacceptable" and recommended a number of measures to improve access to treatment for patients with rare cancers.

The Off Limits report used Freedom of Information requests to collect data from health trusts and authorities across England about how they dealt with requests for "off-label" drugs.

These requests often come from patients with rare cancers for which there is no licensed treatment but which may benefit from the off-label drugs - those which are licensed for similar illnesses.

The survey found many trusts refused such requests due to funding issues and because the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) cannot order NHS organisations to provide these treatments free of charge.

The charity used the figures obtained from 43 primary care trusts to calculate a national estimate of the number of requests for off-label treatments.

Of the 43 trusts which provided data, 902 requests were made over three years, with 583 of those being approved and 298 rejected.

The charity said this suggested a total of 3,188 requests would have been made to England's 152 primary care trusts during the same time period, with 2,061 approvals and 1,053 patients being denied the treatment.

Some requests were terminated or were still pending at the time the data was collated.
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Think Progress| 8.14.09 @ 7:09AM

Rep. Paul Broun: Obama's Socialist Elite Is Planning For Martial Law
Published on 08-13-2009 Email To Friend Print Version

Source: Think Progress

The Athens Banner-Herald reports today that Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) told constituents yesterday that he thinks Democratic leaders are planning to declare martial law:

He also spoke of a “socialistic elite” - Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as an excuse to declare martial law.

“They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” he said. “We’ve seen that historically.”

The Banner-Herald also notes that Broun told town hall attendees that they should tell friends and relatives in surrounding states to lobby conservative Blue Dog Democrats to fight progressive health care legislation, who are also the targets of the insurance industry’s campaign to make themselves the primary benificiaries of any health care legislation.

Melvin| 8.14.09 @ 7:37AM

It all boils down to resources. When the boomer generation matures, we will completely overwhelm the system from SS to Medicare.
So what is a person to do with all us octogenarians?
It is easier and cheaper to cull the herd than to perpetuate it.
Look at it this way. As a politician, stealing from the taxpayers isn't infinite, sooner or later the taxpayer will also run out of money for the government to extort from.
Government still wants to spend and skim off trillions of dollars but those damn pesky boomer's keep getting in the way by virtue of them getting older. So what does government do? It offs the old bastards.
The government won't have to pay health care, won't have to pay out SS benefits, and won't have to pay for all those free Hove-rounds that are advertised on TV. By euthanizing us, before we get to expensive it is a win, win situation for the government and families won't be saddled with having to visit grandma and grandpa in the rest home.
Ahh, the golden years, I just can't wait.

Chuck| 8.14.09 @ 7:40AM

There are people who would unhesitatingly spend tens and even hundreds of thousands of other people's (taxpayers') money to eke out another few days or weeks of poor quality of life -- confined to a bed and hooked-up to a half-dozen tubes, barely able to move let alone tend to any activities of daily living, and with complete knowledge and awareness that, no matter what, their days have dwindled down to a precious few. Why shouldn't such people be restrained from indulging their own foolhardiness and helping to wreck a system upon which we all, sooner or later, will have to rely? That is, if it's even still there when we need it.

Robert Rosencrans| 8.14.09 @ 7:50AM

One thing Mr. Klein failed to mention that would not be covered in the health plan is simple human stupidity.

Example: Since major illness can strike at any age why limit the concept of end of life counseling to the elderly? I'm not endorsing it, just pointing out the stupidity.

Example: Create a system like Medicare which is a bottomless pit of expenses then keep prodding the horse to the cliff because no one can say no to granny/grandpa.

Example: Get the government involved in health care in the 60's after which time costs skyrocket and not question the relationship between government interference in medical markets and skyrocketing costs.

Einstein: If you do the same thing every day and expect different results, that's the definition of insanity.

Terry's tragic end| 8.14.09 @ 8:15AM

Mr. Klein, your statement that "an accident left the Florida woman [Terry Schiavo] incapable of expressing whether she wanted to be kept alive with the aid of life-sustaining technology" seems misleading. Terry was given food and water through a simple feeding tube called a PEG tube; no one knows whether she could have chewed and swallowed her food, because her husband would not allow a "swallow study" to be performed. A feeding tube is necessary for people who cannot swallow their food, but if you are including it in "life-sustaining technology," that makes it sound complicated -- like a ventilator (which Terry did not need, because she breathed on her own. )

An ominous sign for people who really need a feeding tube (and there are many thousands of them) is that Obama said in early 2008 that the biggest regret of his political career was supporting the right of Terry's parents to appeal to a federal court to keep her feeding tube in place.

When Terry was deprived of nourishment and water, she suffered a slow, painful death in March 2005 -- a process that took 13 horrifying days. If any of us killed a dog that way, we'd be arrested.

Bill Barney| 8.14.09 @ 8:19AM

she wanted to be kept alive with the aid of life-sustaining technology
Ms. Schiavo had a feeding tube keeping her alive not high tech equipment.

Melvin| 8.14.09 @ 8:30AM

A major societal shift has taken place in American society. There was a day that Grandma and Grandpa were revered in the family unit.
Eventually, time marches on and Grandma and Grandma grew older and roles were switched. The children took care of Grandma and Grandma.
But somewhere along the long line attitude was shifted from taking care of mom and dad when the got old to casting them off or sticking them somewhere.
Even the attitude of the medical profession has changed to a certain extent, when doctors took the hypocritical oath are now thinking about eugenics.
But let us say as a society that we begin to embrace euthanizing of certain diseases, cancers, or what have you. The temptation to play God could become to great, especially those that are in a position to implement or decide who lives or dies.
A serial murderer was asked once, "Why did you murder so many people?" He replied, "Killing, gets easier after the first one, because the guilt of the act is removed."
This is exactly why the medical profession and society still demands that we as human beings spend what ever is necessary to protect human life because once that threshold of deciding each others fate, choosing who lives and dies becomes easier because we no longer feel guilty about it.

Ryan| 8.14.09 @ 8:33AM

Schiavo's situation was exacerbated by crazy people on both sides of the debate, and we came to find out that the media had been manipulated by her parents. The decision should have been her husband's, no matter how big a jerk the guy was, because no abuse was proven.

That being said, one solution may be to increase the age for benefits in both medicare and SS. People are living longer and healthier, and are producing more in their working years. We also need more of a free market in health care.

Jen in Ohio | 8.14.09 @ 8:36AM

When a government-controlled health care system is empowered to make all decisions over a person's medical treatment (or denied treatment), how will it affect a person's legal documents such as a Power-of-Attorney over medical decisions and end-of-life wishes? Will these legal documents be made null and void?

Jen in Ohio | 8.14.09 @ 8:38AM

Under a government-controlled health care system, what will happen to long-term comatose patients?

ame| 8.14.09 @ 9:24AM

I AM SICK AND TIRED OF BEING TREATED AS AN IGNORANT STUPID AMERICAN... I KNOW THAT LIFE AND DEATH DECISIONS ARE AND MUST BE MADE, BUT THOSE DECISIONS ARE BETWEEN FAMILY MEMBERS AND THEIR DOCTORS - NOT THE GOVERNMENT. THE ISSUE HERE IS FREEDOM - IT IS PROTECTING AND PRESERVING OUR DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLIC CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, NOT END OF LIFE CARE.
STOP PATRONIZING AMERICANS AND GET TO THE CORE OF THE ISSUE: AMERICANS MUST RESIST TO THE DEATH - OUR MILITARY IS FIGHTING FOR OUR FREEDOM AND WE MUST DO SO AT HOME ALSO -
AMERICAN MUST FIGHT THE OBAMA/PELOSI/SOROS/ACORN/UNION SOCIALIST FASCIST ATTEMPT TO TAKEOVER OUR GOVERNMENT AND OUR FREEDOMS - NOW!

Bob| 8.14.09 @ 9:42AM

You need to take one step backward, and ask what business it is of the government to dictate all such things.

It's one thing to ask reasonable questions about end of life issues. It is quite another to take that decision making process away from families and put it squarely in the hands of a Federal Bureaucracy!

How dare they? ??

The American Revolution was about Taxation without Representation. It seemed as a matter of art, mostly, that Jefferson illuminated the central rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

And, now, we are in a "debate" as to whether the "Right to Life" is to be rationed by a Federal Bureaucracy? Because some moron politician makes the biannual promice to save money for us? Are we serious? Really! Are we seriously debating our Right to Life v some few dollars? Dollars that we all know won't really be saved anyway?

galen| 8.14.09 @ 9:43AM

Everyone gets Teri Schiavo wrong. The husband won a big settlement because he was going to use the money to keep his wife alive. Then he suddenly remembered she didn't want to live that way. Where the courts failed was in not conducting a hearing on the possibility of recovery and if in fact Teri had actually asked to be terminated!

Bob| 8.14.09 @ 9:53AM

Kudos Klein -- you are directly on target. As I've said before, my wife was an administrator at a nursing home and dealt with this issue on a daily basis. Quality of life is a huge issue -- and a personal issue. There are few people who see how people live on machines for months/years with no recognition of any family members, that will decide to extend their own life if they had to make the decision. I would suggest any of you that really want to to understand this issue better to volunteer at a nursing home for 6 months or so on weekends.

I do have a conservative solution for this -- let people pay for their own health care. Instead of giving money directly to doctors, give the money identified by the insurance policy directly to those insured. If the cost goes beyond that, then they are out of luck. After all, insurance policies have limits. If you believe that health care is a privilege, and not a right, then you should believe in a free market solution. The choice of how much to spend at the end of life should belong to the family and the individual. If money is a problem, they can choose how much debt they wish to have.

I'm interested to see how many of you "true conservatives" will agree to a truly conservative solution where if you decide to put a person on life support, you have to pay for it personally.

Again, if you don't agree to pay for it yourself, then you do see health care as a right, not a privilege.

Steve| 8.14.09 @ 10:07AM

Bob @8.14:

Bob, is that you? Or a new Bob? Anyhow, I agree with your post. Push the decision-making down to the local (personal) level in health care.

I have no problem with Ms. Palin or other folks demagogue-ing the issue, however. Reminds me of the Left scaring the Depends off the oldsters in 1995, telling them Gingrich and the Right wanted them to eat dog food. Turnabout is fair play.

Bob| 8.14.09 @ 10:15AM

Steve, the second Bob is me -- your beloved RINO. Rationing can only be done correctly when the individual makes the decision on how much they will pay to extend life for themselves and their family. If you don't have the money, you don't get the care. Like I said, if you disagree with that, then you do believe that health care is a right, not a privilege.

ChuckD| 8.14.09 @ 10:15AM

Rosecrans, you are exactly right. It's too late now. Once we have be forced to suck at the Gov tit, there's no easy, bloodless, way to turn back.

Ryan, where is you evidence or reference that Shiavo's parent's manipulated the media? Just wondering.

Jean| 8.14.09 @ 10:23AM

Your article contains a glaring misstatement. Terry Schiavo was not being kept alive by advanced technology, but by food and water, just like the rest of us. Her "death" was accomplished by denying her those basic fundamentals of life; she was starved to death! By order of the courts, she was denied food and water based on the dubious and unsubstantiated claims of her husband that it was she who wished to end her life. She had financial resources from a medical lawsuit she had won to pay for her care, and parents willing to take responsibility for her care, allowing her husband to walk away if he wished. That wasn't good enough, for some strange reason. She had to be killed, and the US courts made sure that her husband got what he wanted. While the HR bill doesn't explicitly call for the establishment of a "death panel" is there any doubt that is where we will end up? Our culture and our courts arrived there years ago!

ChuckD| 8.14.09 @ 10:35AM

Bob,

As a true conservative I am in favor of getting the Gov. out of the health care business and placing limits on the amount of care we provide to the elderly or anyone. Life is not hard, it's damn hard.

But here's the thing your analysis is missing and Rosencrans explains. The horse is already out of the barn.

The government is already in the health care business and costs are already artificially high. So the limitation to the amount of health care we could provide privately is practically non-existent.

Get the government out of the health care business altogether, force liberal justices to prevent frivolous lawsuits and insane awards to wronged patients. Then the price for medical care will go down and limits to the health care one can provide for Grandma and Grandpa will go up.

But since that isn't going to anytime soon, we are stuck.

Louis Jenkins| 8.14.09 @ 10:56AM

"reimburse Medicare recipients for one session every five years, and potentially more if their health deteriorates considerably or they are admitted into a nursing facility. " So the ACORN retread social worker/ agent goes into a room at the Nursing Home to advise a medicare recipient about "end of life decisions." Unfortunately the recipient is bed bound, drooling, suffering from dementia, arthritis, loss of hearing and vision, cannot feed themselves, wears a diaper or has a foley catheter, and has suffered a debilitating stroke. The recipient has no comprehension what the agent is talking about, and only stares straight ahead while breathing like a guppy fish. "Well, how did the session go," his boss asks later? "Went great, the patient did not object to one word I said," he or she says. " "Wonderful," says he boss. "I'll advise the panel."

How about the application of living wills, advanced directives, or certified "No Code" orders? These mechanisms are already in place and commonly used. Everyone should have one or all of these documents in place. Should the Federal Government be allowed power of medical attorney? No! We don't need a panel or a government advisor/social worker meddling in these affairs. It is my right to live, likewise, it is my right to die when living is a burden to others.

Ryan| 8.14.09 @ 10:57AM

Several comments:

First, on Schiavo. Her parents went through and recorded HOURS of tape to try and convince people she was responding to them, when they only came off with a few minutes of "results." Also, the autopsy revealed how far gone she really was at the end. Also, legally speaking, it was her husband's responsibility - not the state nor the parents' - to make those ethical decisions. We just didn't like him because he was a jerk much of the time. Schiavo wasn't starved to death - she was dead already. The wikipedia page is pretty decent here.

Second, I agree that end-of-life issues should be borne by the individual; the problem we run into is what constitutes extending life. Simply providing oxygen can add to certain quality of life and mobility for some; for others, it's just a machine keeping a heart beating. Insurance companies would probably benefit by paying for similar counseling for the elderly, and having it be optional. I don't think it's unreasonable for medicare to cease extending life when it's simply machines, but the problem is the gray areas.

stephanie| 8.14.09 @ 11:01AM

Hey Rosencrans, you crack me up!

Philip Klein| 8.14.09 @ 11:11AM

On the blog, I responded to those readers who objected to my application of the phrase "life-sustaining technology" to Terri Schiavo: http://spectator.org/blog/2009/08/14/remembering-schiavo

Bob| 8.14.09 @ 11:18AM

Bob
I agree with you completely.
The government has no business in these decisions. I have been involved with these difficult decisions a number of times with close family members. There is no possible mechanism by which the government can have any input into quality of life decisions that has any value or individual relevance.
I agree also as to cost. Policies have limits and the individual and family can and should decide how much they are willing to spend or if need be go into debt to prolong life.
I think the government would do well to develop a plan to exit the 46% of healthcare it is now involved in a manner that is least disruptive and provides for a transition to market driven alternative. I would do the same for Social Security. (But that discussion is for another day)
Everywhere you turn in the entire healthcare debate you find government making decisions it is incapable of making. When O talks about the boards of doctors and scientists analyzing treatments to find what is most ‘effective’ it is the government who gets to define what effective means.
Their definition will almost always be different than the individual patients and may in fact be diametrically opposed to what the patient and their doctor view as necessary or effective.
The government will seek to quantify everything so that individuals do not have to make decisions or more importantly take responsibility for those decisions.
For government the primary driving consideration will always be cost because it is the most readily quantifiable. Cost is a factor at the individual level but I can decide for myself how much of MY money I wish to invest for the additional time.
Mr. Klein as long as we are bringing up issues that are not adequately being addressed in the debate I would like to add one more truly foundational question.
The entire discussion of the healthcare “crisis” revolves around how much we as a country spend on healthcare. We spend 17% of GDP or we spend more than any other developed nation, all of this is offered from the vantage point that it is the government’s money. It is our money that is being spent. 54% comes directly from us through market enterprises and 46% after having been taken from us at gun point via taxes and spent by the government. It is our money, earned by our labor.
The original Bob

Mattled| 8.14.09 @ 12:12PM

New Christmas Song:

Grandma Got Run Over By Obama's Healthcare.

I hope the word Christmas didn't offend anyone.

I don't do "holiday".

Liberal Reader| 8.14.09 @ 12:27PM

I can only say that I'm pleased that the government has finally decided to start executing old people.

They don't work. Why should they eat?

They're sick. Why should they be afforded health care?

Look: it's not as though their executions have to be painful.

They'll be humane, quick, and best of all, convenient for the customer.

It's capitalism at its best.

Ryan| 8.14.09 @ 1:25PM

I hope you're a strawman, lib reader, because otherwise, you've completely missed several good posts that also pointed to the humanity of the situation.

Sue| 8.14.09 @ 1:31PM

Are we free people or not? Are we free to contract with a doctor, a hospital, an insurance company, another relative or not? If we want government to decide everything and provide everything, what would be the purpose of living?

Do you really want to become a Nation of lazy, sloths? If the government removes all "worries" from our life, all cares and concerns about the ones we love, we have turned our very spirits and souls into an evil being with truly no regard for others. The government is not a loving, caring creature. It is an entity created by man to serve man. The problem is - what man is controlling it and who is he serving? It may not be you he serves; it may be you he destroys.

And guess what? You won't even be able to look the "man" in the eye and challenge him. He will become a faceless, nameless, bureaucrat blob protected by other faceless, nameless cowards calling themselves humans.

Think people think. Health care reform we need; we do not need some stupid government formula using "quality-adjusted life years" or "complete lives" theory to tell us when we need to stop our health care needs.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18280675/Principles-for-Allocation-of-Scarce-Medical-Interventions

Check out Mr. Esekiel Emamuel's "ethical" analysis of the complete lives system for allocating medical resources when it comes to vaccines.

This policy has been decided on by this Administration. Why is this man still on the taxpayer dole? Is he writing additional policies for the new health care bill?

S.L. Toddard| 8.14.09 @ 1:52PM

I saw on Glenn Beck that under Obama's plan if you go to your doctor with a head cold they chop your head off. They also plan to skin the elderly alive and use their skin to create tents for homeless Marxists. We better start acting hysterical before his MURDERCARE proposal kills us all.

Sheldon| 8.14.09 @ 2:18PM

Do we want to talk sanity. Paying for a voluntary consultation once every 5 years may change the economics of the health care system.

Here's the way it might work:
"When somebody signs up for Medicare when they are 65 years old-...I think you ought to.[snip] execute a durable power of attorney when you become eligible. Eighty percent of the cost of health care to me, to you, and to anybody else happens in the last 60 days of life. More often than not, people are not in a condition to make a decision for themselves. Because of laws, and because we are a compassionate nation, the physician will keep you alive as long as he can. If you had a chance, you might rather say if I am being hydrated and given nutrition but will never become conscious again, I give the doctors the authority to make the appropriate medical decision. The money that would save is in the ``gazillions'' of dollars--if there is such a number. It would help us to manage that cost."

In fact the speaker want to go farther. In the above quote here's the words snipped out: to be required .

The quote is from http://isakson.senate.gov/floor/2008/042408healthcare.htm
And the title of the document is
Thursday, April 24, 2008 U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Floor Statement on Health Care
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

My god, the death panels aren't being pushed by the Democrats, they're being pushed by conservative republicans. Better make sure that the town hall meetings ensure the truth gets out. There's only one hope: Ron Paul

Bob| 8.14.09 @ 2:24PM

Toddard -- you still watch Glenn Beck? Take a look at this where Beck said the health care system in the U.S. sucks. When he moved to Fox, he changed his mind. And you trust this bozo?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX1rLv_hNeI

These are the same types of turnarounds you see with O'Reilly and Limbaugh as well. They say things that get ratings and don't give a _____ about us.

macdaddy| 8.14.09 @ 2:27PM

I saw at a townhall meeting where Obama said that under Obamacare a 100 year-old lady should have gotten a pain pill instead of a pacemaker that improved her life for another 5 years and counting. We better start acting hysterical before his MURDERCARE proposal kills us all.

Grzmlyk| 8.14.09 @ 2:29PM

The Turd Returns!

That was funny. I laughed till I stopped.

Don't get too excited, Turd: Your future is probably not as Soylent Green. Too gristly and jejune. Hardly palatable enough to serve, even to your fellow Obamatons.

But don't despair. I see you as a nice coat rack, perhaps in the lobby at the Obama Ministry of Loyalty. You will achieve in death what you couldn't in life: Utility!

Is this a great country or what? Where you can serve The Messiah in perpetuity!

macdaddy| 8.14.09 @ 2:32PM

Bob,

Glenn Beck isn't really enamored of the US healthcare system because it almost killed him. Well, the system didn't almost kill him, complications of his care did. These complications would still occur under Obamacare, so it isn't hypocritical of him to resist Obamacare.

Bob| 8.14.09 @ 2:32PM

ChuckD -- I don't care where the system is now. Rationing will come one day because we cannot afford health care as a country. If you submit to the Rosencrans model, then you might just as well lay down and get run over. The only way rationing can possibly work is to have individuals make the cost decision vs. length of life. Otherwise, the government will be there and you can't stop it. As fiscal conservatives, we need to turn back to the principles of individual responsibility as solutions to our problems. Otherwise, Obama is right that there will be a public insurance system whether it be now or later.

Bob| 8.14.09 @ 2:37PM

macdaddy, the point is that Beck's statement now is that we have the best health care system in the world -- directly opposite to what he said then. Face it, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly will say anything that gets them viewers and money. Beck was working for another network then and said something that would get him more airtime. And you still watch these bozos?

And just to be consistent, I think the same of Olbermann and Matthews.

S.L. Toddard| 8.14.09 @ 2:38PM

"Toddard -- you still watch Glenn Beck? Take a look at this where Beck said the health care system in the U.S. sucks. When he moved to Fox, he changed his mind. And you trust this bozo?"

Uh, no. I think Glenn Beck is ridiculous. It's called sarcasm, ol' boy. Even Glenn Beck wouldn't claim Obama plans "to skin the elderly alive and use their skin to create tents for homeless Marxists".

I'm an American conservative, man - hardly the sort to get my news from a - *shudder* - talk show host.

S.L. Toddard| 8.14.09 @ 2:42PM

"Face it, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly will say anything that gets them viewers and money"

Because they are *talk show hosts* - entertainers. They are, by definition, *not* to be taken seriously. It would be like looking to Maury Povich for geopolitical analysis.

Now that I think if it, that's more proof that contemporary "conservatives" are in actuality liberal internationalists - like Liberals they look to entertainers for political guidance. For the Obama left, it's movie stars. For the Bush left, it's talk show hosts. Both are, of course, ludicrous.

Grzmlyk| 8.14.09 @ 2:48PM

Hey turd, my trick knee is telling me that, sooner or later, you and Bob are going to wind up getting a room. So why not cut to the chase and spare us your brand of "conservativism?"

You wouldn't get your news from a *shudder* talk show host, but you would troll a *shudder* plebian comments thread? Tsk, tsk.

Dear, dear, old chap, why are you slumming amongst us benighted fools? I guess the poverty of intelligence displayed on this site is picturesque from your rarefied perch bestriding the world like a colossus.

BTW, this is not an endorsement of Glenn Beck's style - he is indeed, IMHO, thoroughly obnoxious - but that doesn't mean he doesn't occasionally utter *shudder* facts.

ChuckD| 8.14.09 @ 2:57PM

Bob,

You totally misunderstood what I said and I think Rosencrans as well.

"As fiscal conservatives, we need to turn back to the principles of individual responsibility as solutions to our problems. "

I could not agree more with this statement.

The problem is we needed to do that back in the 60s. The quasi-socialist system we have in place now has already driven up health costs and reduced the amount of available service.

To make things right again would require an end to all government involvement in health care. Which in my opinion would be good.

And it would require intelligent people to act as judges and jurors to prevent greedy tort lawyers
from obtaining enormously out of proportion awards to victims of alleged malpractice.

I don't mean that we should abolish tort, or change the legal system, just enforce it with common sense, the way our fathers did.

Then the free market would ration medical services naturally, based on a person's ability to pay.

My only point was that to go it alone now, with the existing government involvement artificially driving up prices, is difficult if not impossible.

Pingback| 8.14.09 @ 3:06PM

Believe That the Health Care Bill Includes Death Panels? Then Republican Senator Says links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Today, 01:06 PM Blind Sniper Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 320 posts, read 49,146 times Reputation: 136 I thought this was a good read on the "death panel" claims. http://spectator.org/archives/2009/08/14/live-or-let-die As for some of the comments thus far: I don't think that the doctors are fleecing me / the American people. I do think that the insurance companies are a total racket and that big…

Sue| 8.14.09 @ 3:15PM

Privatize medicaid/medicare; don't socialize everyone's care.

Pingback| 8.14.09 @ 3:18PM

Believe That the Health Care Bill Includes Death Panels? Then Republican Senator Says links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Today, 01:06 PM Blind Sniper Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2009 320 posts, read 49,146 times Reputation: 136 I thought this was a good read on the "death panel" claims. http://spectator.org/archives/2009/08/14/live-or-let-die As for some of the comments thus far: I don't think that the doctors are fleecing me / the American people. I do think that the insurance companies are a total racket and that big…

Michael L. Hauschild| 8.14.09 @ 3:20PM

I have just gone through this process. My father succumbed to Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Syndrome earlier this year. With his physician, and while he was still cognizant before the onset of his rapidly progressing dementia, we discussed the deterioration he would sustain and the medical options available at each stage. He drew the line at where the increasingly invasive procedures would stop. We did seek a second opinion, which produced exactly the same prognosis.
The latter stage of Parkinson’s typically manifests “aspiration,” which is food entering the lungs as the swallowing reflex weakens and fails. It produces incessant chocking and invariably results in chronic pneumonia.
Dad had reached this stage of the disease and he had chosen starvation over the feeding tube. I was scheduled to meet with the doctor to affirm this decision being his medical power of attorney. The doctor was called away on an emergency so I was told to come back the next day. I went downstairs and my fed my father as it turned out his last puréed meal. They called me on my way home and said he simply stopped breathing and suffocated. I am sure he (or a greater power) spared the family the indignity of watching him starve.
Why the comment? I am certain that many of you are uninitiated as you banter about “government health care,” quality of life benchmarks, or viability; take some time to ponder who you want to make these decisions. I’m paying attention, late at night if I am very tired, my left arm (as his did) is stating to tremble.

Liberal Reader| 8.14.09 @ 3:28PM

You people do understand that your reading an article that is headed by a graphic of the GRIM REAPER.

Jumping Jesus. It looks like an Iron Maiden record cover.

Don L| 8.14.09 @ 3:30PM

Discussion? Do youf really think you can have a fruitful discussion with the "culture of death" group whose economics means that the old have to go. Why do they tax the rich? The money is there.
Why do they kill the babies? The votes are there.
Why do they attack the old?
a. to solve the medicare, mendicaid and social security losses they've ignored.
b. Older people tend to vote against their culture of death.
c. Socialists can never do without a scapegoat and "Bush did it" is wearing thin.
d. Because they got all their power by dividing America against itself.
e. Think of the estate taxes.
f. That'll get rid of those darned churchgoers
g. payoff to the anti-population nuts.

S.L. Toddard| 8.14.09 @ 3:38PM

"You wouldn't get your news from a *shudder* talk show host, but you would troll a *shudder* plebian comments thread?"

I would never "troll" anywhere, although I do tend to frequent places where proponents of big government liberalism (such as GOP supporters) gather - and they gather here. You cannot enlighten the wayward without braving the darkness, my friend. Just be thankful.

Grzmlyk| 8.14.09 @ 3:39PM

Chuck D, I agree with you completely.

And don't forget that huge tort awards are merely the tip of the tort reform iceberg - the costs of defensive medicine represent the critical mass of the tort issue.

But hey, since trial lawywers contribute so much to the Dems - and Repubs - tort reform will never be on the radar screen. And Obama's demonizing doctors for unnecessary tests and procedures is outlandish given that he has already taken off the table the real reason so many unnecessary tests and procedures are undertaken.

And it seems oxymoronic to me to talk of a system of rationing where decisions are made by patients. That's the opposite of rationing.

Anyone who thinks the "public option" is a good idea belongs in a boobyhatch. Paid for by taxpayers, of course.

Ken| 8.14.09 @ 3:41PM

The inevitable anecdote, Terri Schiavo. This case has very little to do with the issue at hand. That aside, count me as one of those who completely opposes any "counseling" from government lackeys trying to convince me to give up and die.

I can make my own decisions, and I, like many I have known including my own mother, have made sensible decisions about what lengths I wish medical professionals to go through. There is no role for government intervention here, it is none of their business and they would ultimately overstep their authority like they always do.

S.L. Toddard| 8.14.09 @ 3:42PM

Also, where is your patriotism, people? How can you speak ill of our Commander In Chief during wartime? Don't you think of the demoralizing effect this will have on The Troops - hearing their Commander In Chief condemned as a "socialist" while they're FIGHTING A WAR?!!

WHERE IS YOUR PATRIOTISM?!!! THE TROOPS! THE TROOOOOOOOPS!!!!!!

Sheldon | 8.14.09 @ 4:03PM

In a crystal ball, I see more and more benefit determination groups in private insurance as they make benefits more closely match premiums.

Insurance contracts are often described as contracts of utmost fidelity or utmost good faith. The insured can't lie on the application. The reason this is so important is because it violates the whole concept of insurance. It doesn't work if the insured had more information about their health than the insurance company.

Already, some people are getting tests done in secret so they don't show up as pre-existing conditions.

What if you discover you might have Huntington's chorea but there's nothing written down anywhere linking you or relatives to Huntington's. Huntington's is 50/50. You get the test done in secret. And you're positive.

So you buy a long term care policy and hope and pray that the insurance company can't prove you lied. If you get away with it, that's great for you but bad for the insurance company and society.

To the extent that insurance companies are acting in good faith this is what rescission is all about and why insurance companies need it.

And now along comes DNA testing and other advanced testing. It's already available but the worst is yet to come. A whole genome is now $50,000. In a few years it will be down to a $1000. You're a private insurance company. How can you take on an individual risk without requiring DNA testing if they can get it done cheaply and in secret.

Of course you can pass laws prohibiting companies from requiring testing and there's been some efforts in this regard. But this is government interference in the free market and can't be allowed.

So what do the insurance companies do? Already there are questions about genetic diseases of relatives on some applications. If the discrepancies are large enough it's no longer insurance. I read somewhere that only 1/3 of people seeking individual health policies get one.

Let's take our inspiration from Liberty Mutual.

"Give me your tired, your temporarily poor,
Your huddled employees yearning to breathe free, These wretched entrepreneurs starting small on your teeming shore. Send these, the uninsurable tempest-tossed to me,
I'll give them the finger outside the ER door!"

And once the DNA results are in, it only makes sense to adjust the premium in line with the DNA testing. Of course, the more knowledge the insurance company has, the better they can judge the risk. And the better they can judge the risk, the more accurate the premium will be.

From the individual's point of view, this defeats the whole point of insurance. The people with the greatest need for insurance won't be able to buy it because the fair and proper premium [no joke] is more than they could ever pay.

And of course, those people with great DNA will pay less. And the risk will change over time as there's more information gleaned from DNA and published. A $5,000 premium might be correct today but next week it should be $8,000.

Seems to me, you need more individualized premium setting and benefit checking. That requires more people to search for possible discrepancies of knowledge between the insured and the insurance company. It isn't economical to do this when setting up the policy. So you're going to do your checking when people are seeking benefits that outstrip the premium by a huge margin.

Of course, these aren't death panels. And they won't be government bureaucrats applying a clear and well defined policy. Thank goodness for that.

I did a bit of poking around on the 'net and found this 2002 article.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/000040.html

And there's a great article from the enemy here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/health/24dna.html?pagewanted=2

Chuck D| 8.14.09 @ 4:16PM

S. L Toddard,

"I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic" -Hilliary Clinton

El Rey| 8.14.09 @ 4:21PM

One of B. Hussein Obama's trade offs is health insurance for illegal aliens and rationing of treatment for senior American citizens, who, by the way, build the society that the illegals are now (and will) spong off.

Sheldon| 8.14.09 @ 4:31PM

Here's what's wrong with Klein's column. He doesn't know when he should stop. The proper and decent place is after his comments about Terry Shiavo.

Why proper and decent? Because there is a value in truth unadorned without some mealy mouthed words. The 'teaching moment' is here.

And the lesson is this: I won't tolerate out and out lies. I won't take advantage of out and out lies even if they are politically useful. I recognize that there are limits to what's acceptable in public debate. That's integrity.

I'm Canadian. So was David Frum until 2007. He was born and raised in Toronto, the son of one of the great interviewers, Barbara Frum. She was an icon on Canadian Public Radio for many, many years. I'd like to think it was his Canadian upbringing that lead him to speak the simple truth about how the debate has gone well beyond what is acceptable in a civil society.

Read what he says here:
http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/99474/The_reckless_Right_courts_violence

Thom| 8.14.09 @ 5:21PM

“But firearms and politics never mix well.”

“if he were those things, somebody should shoot him.”

Sheldon, as a Canadian I presume you think our Presidents and Congress persons have some sort of divine right of Kings or Queens that requires us to stop exercising our rights (not Canadian concepts of) in their presence? Federal, State laws rule here and in the case of the NH case the man was perfectly in his rights at both levels. Mishandling a weapon is what that is but a Secret Service agent famously shot another agent on the White House grounds not too distant in the past and they didn’t disarm the Secret Service because one person made a mistake did they? The President is surrounded by heavily armed people who won’t hesitate to shoot someone that they consider a threat provided they don’t throw a shoe (bomb) at him.

As for Frum’s first comment, dead wrong and if Frum wasn’t still a Canadian he might know something useful about our Founding and how firearms and politics “mixed” a bit.

As for his second statement, that phrase alone or even more benign will get you arrested in your country. Generally we don’t do that here yet.

Did it ever occur to you that when Union Thugs start beating up and intimidating people at these meetings that the “guns showing up thing” has a legitimate motivation? Probably not but I’ve made the case just the same. Raising the red flag on the lack of civility here is perfectly legit but Frum as usual ignores those that drew blood first in order to protect his investment from last November’s election. It isn’t the gun you can see in plain sight or locked in the car out in the parking lot that is the problem here but the one carried out of sight by the person that feels he has absolutely nothing to lose.

Death Panel| 8.14.09 @ 5:23PM

We have considered the case of S. L. Toddard . He clearly is no longer living a meaningful life. His only human contact comes on the internet where he interacts with his various bogeymen. You say, "Hey Turd (his affectionate nick name) " and he replies, "WHERE IS YOUR PATRIOTISM?!!! THE TROOPS! THE TROOOOOOOOPS!!!!!! " All his statements can be simplified to "look at me, look at me, help me, I'm smart Daddy, etc." He apparently has developed feelings for somebody named Glenn Beck and has been rejected causing an irrational bitterness. This is not life. He must go.

Next up is the case of Bob.
-----------------------------------------
Bob| 8.14.09 @ 11:18AM
Bob
I agree with you completely.
------------------------------------
Something is not right here. If Toddard has to go then it would be wrong to keep Bob since he is also suffering from megalomania. There is an additional plus here. We have seen how Bob deals with people with which he doesn't agree. There must be a wife somewhere that will not miss being called names. You can picture it. He tracks some dirt into the house and she calls him on it. Then come the accusations of listening to Rush Limbaugh. No she won't miss that. Bob must go.

S.L. Toddard| 8.14.09 @ 5:40PM

Why on earth would anyone care what David Frum thinks. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, as they say, and David Frum can't even say that much. David Frum is a 5th columnist - an immigrant leech who twisted the truth beyond recognition and helped scare the American people into sending their sons to fight an "enemy" that posed no threat to our national security. He has the blood of four thousand American soldiers on his hands and should be run out of the country.

As for Chuck D - yes, that was my point. It was the GOP and their supporters who shrieked shrilly that anyone who critized the president in war time was un-patriotic. And now - unsurprisingly - GOP supporters are doing just that - in a Time of War while The Troops are Fighting For Freedom (not our freedom, but the freedom of the people we have conquered and are now occupying against their will).

So which is it - was it proper for the Left to criticize the president during war time (I mean morally right - it's been proven that they were *factually* right about the Iraq War), or are the "conservatives" now screeching about "death panels" and calling their own Commander In Chief a "Marxist" and a Nazi during a Time Of War un-patriotic and anti-American?

jr| 8.14.09 @ 5:59PM

As one or more poster said, what we spend for health care should be up to me. Before the age of sophistication, i.e, the 30s and 40s, we had doctors that would home visit. We have now moved to the point that someone else wants to decide whether we will get a pain pill or death pill. Ah yes, the period of the FDR presidency. Since them we have come a long way -- towards socialism, marxism, and communism. Do you do anything today that isn't monitored, controlled, restricted, or otherwise free of the gubermint? It is going to get worse kiddies, a lot worse. Thanks, fruitcakes, nuts, liberals, Democrats, and lastly - the Republicans who follow-the-leader. government. When Congress is in session, we are doomed for they think we need government.

Sheldon| 8.14.09 @ 6:49PM

To Thom: Apparently Kostric's carrying a gun openly was legal. Ok, no problem with that, never said there was. That's the local law no matter how reasonable or bizarre I think it is. It was however, an obvious provocation and was morally if not legally an incitement to murder.

What's worse was the subtext of McVeigh, the OKC bombing and the martyrdom of Timothy McVeigh. I read and wrote a lot about the militia movement and the OKC bombing. I could tell you why McVeigh's buying racing fuel is excellent evidence that no government agent was involved in making the bomb.

I took a quick look at the web site named at the bottom of Kostric's sign. At the very least, Kostric intended his sign as a reference to McVeigh and the OKC bombing.

That disposes of your first paragraph.

Frum only became a US citizen in 2007. Becoming an American citizen did not automatically have him lose his Canadian citizenship. To do so, he would have to apply to renounce his Canadian citizenship and pay the $100 fee. It doesn't appear he has done so.

Frum's J.D. degree is from Harvard where he was taught American Constitutional Law.

In similar circumstances, as long as Kostric was following Canadian gun laws, there would be nothing wrong with his carrying a sign. Oh, but in Canada he couldn't carry a handgun like that. Probably not, but you wouldn't be implying that you don't respect Canadian law no matter how misguided you think it might be.

First, on the union guys beating up Gladney. It didn't happen. The video starts with a union member on the ground. A few seconds later Gladney is knocked down. Two seconds later Gladney is on his feet with no visible marks and no behavior indicating he'd been beaten up. Granted I learned about the video from mediamatters.org. However, the video was just linked from that site and is apparently the exact one used to prove Gladney was beaten up.

I'm glad to see you think bringing a gun, , to a volatile situation might not be such a good idea.
I read a gun enthusiast who said that the gun's open holster was just unbelievably stupid.

I have know idea what
"Frum as usual ignores those that drew blood first in order to protect his investment from last November’s election." means.

The comments about danger of openly displayed gun, hidden gun and the behavior of the secret service on other occasions are irrelevant.

ChuckD| 8.14.09 @ 7:01PM

Toddard,

"I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you're not patriotic" -Hilliary Clinton

How does calling Barak Obama a socialist undermine the war effort in Afghanistan?

I didn't even know that calling Barak Obama a socialist was a disparagement let alone a condemnation. In point of fact it is neither, just an objective, provable, and undeniable fact.

Criticizing health care does not affect the morale or the mission of the troops overseas. The war effort has nothing to do with the issue of health care.

Revealing classified information to terrorists, a tactic used frequently by the Left to undermine and endanger the effort of our brave soldiers, does affect their morale and is treasonous.

I never shriek, let alone shrilly.

I criticized the war effort quite often and worked for DOD. I was never called "unpatriotic" by any of my fellow conservatives. I was called some other things, like muddle headed or off-base, but no one ever questioned my loyalty.

I think that was because I never crossed the line. The line the Left crossed repeatedly with a vengeance.

I never voted for the war before I voted against it. The Left did. They voted to send troops into harm's way and began a campaign of vicious criticism trying to undermine the very effort they at first supported.

The claimed that "dumb ol' Bush" tricked them. That biggest lie of the century. The Left changed their tune when they saw the polling results from the shrill shrieking doctor.

But their criticism was and still is a lie. They came to power is 06 and didn't change a thing. Then after they succeeded in electing Barak and gaining control of the entire legislature, the war effort goes on and so does the Bush Doctrine.

They carped about the war to get votes and then they voted Bush's way every time.

I never questioned or doubted the valor, integrity, and self-sacrificial love rendered by our troops on my country's behalf. The Left did.

The took Left sides with terrorist on every issue. The Left never gave them any credit for anything except for whatever failures they committed and then they exaggerated them and repeated them over and over.

Just like you do Mr. Toddard. Even now you refuse to acknowledge they are fighting a war to protect you and our country from terrorism.

The Left called Bush a Nazi and denigrated and abused him for his religion. They produced a movie projecting his assassination.

Nobody has done anything like that on the right to Obama, and don't bring up Limbaugh cause that dog don't hunt.

The left is sick.

Robert Rosencrans| 8.14.09 @ 7:10PM

Where were these trolls when Senator Durbin and Congressman Murtha were referring to the troops as Nazis, murderers and rapists? They undermined the war effort but liberals loved it then.

Paul Crowley| 8.14.09 @ 7:40PM

“The American Revolution was about Taxation without Representation.” [Bob| 8.14.09
@ 9:42AM]

No.

This is not at at all what the American Revolution was "about."

"No Taxation without Representation” is a slogan popularized by the British government and a tactic employed by the British government to keep its colonies, dominions, and some other territories in line, during the 19th century, FOLLOWING the American Revolution. A variation on the theme was the so-called Responsible Government scheme, developed following the uprisings in present-day Canada in 1838 and 1839.

A couple of examples of the more cynical application of British "No Taxation without Representation” are the Act of Union of 1800, which provided Irish members of parliament beginning in 1801, and, even more 'style over stubstance,' the founding of the completely impotent Indian National Congress in the British Empire of India in 1885 (the new national income tax followed the next year, in 1886).

England (Britain after 1707) is the consummate example of a Government that owns a Country (from 1558 onward, but especially from 1689 onward, when parliament took over completely).

It was the tyranny of the British government (Parliament via the puppet monarchs) that was the cause of the American Revolution: The radical and rapid reforms due to the acts of parliament, one after another, completely reforming the colonies immediately following the Seven Years' War (1763-74), peaking with the Quebec Act of 1774. The reforms were quite and bad: Effectively implementing everything that British colonists were warned the French and Spanish were attempting (rightly in the case of the French) as motivation to use American continental militia in the many wars with the French and against the Spanish, from 1697-1763.

Perfideous Albion is a title more than earned by the English government (and that includes its treatment of its own people).

Representation was not a principal issue. Neither was taxation. Most of the new taxes imposed on the colonies up to 1774 were appealed by parliament in a cynical and failed attempt to settle down the "colonials." The taxes called for by the acts were repealed, but all of the new reformed government infrastructure established was reatained.

Appeal was made by the American Colonial Congress in 1775: To the King protesting the usurpations by parliament. The British government's reply, via King George III (effectively to shut up and do as you're told) more than demonstrated the puppet nature of the British monarchy.

Representation would have done nothing for British colonists. The Scots had representation. Representation was the major element in the final conquest of Scotland by England via the Georgian era principle of Rule By Law (i.e. by parliament). The Scottish parliament was dissolved by the Act of Union of 1707. From that time on, Scotland had representation in the parliament at Westminster (a select minority; even if they had wanted to be a real opposition, they would have only been an ineffectual one).

Anyway, the final reasons for American independence are what the American Revolution was about and are given in the Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776.

"Taxation without Representation” is not what the American Revolution was "about."

Sheldon| 8.14.09 @ 7:48PM

Rosencrans: There's two things that people who post need.
1. A willingness to check their facts in advance.
2. A crap detector .

I took one look at 'referring to the troops as Nazi's murderers and rapist' and my crap detector went off.

So I searched for
senator durbin murderers troops OR soldier

Found that lefty site worldnetdaily and here is what the quote actually is in a paragraph. I would hope to think you would agree with it.

I'll even include wnd's opening paragraph that slants the story.

Harvest Crusade

WND TROUBLE SPEAK
Democrat senator:U.S. troops 'Nazis'
Dick Durbin sparks national fury after likening
treatment of terror detainees to KGB, Pol Pot
Posted: June 15, 2005
9:15 pm Eastern

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is coming under heavy fire after saying American treatment of terror detainees at the Guantanamo Naval Base is comparable to torture at the hands of Nazis, Soviet gulags and even Cambodian mass murderer Pol Pot.

Durbin's remarks came last night on the Senate floor, as he diverted from comments on the Energy Bill to discuss allegations of prisoner abuse at the U.S. facility in Cuba. Quoting an FBI agent who was at Guantanamo, Durbin said:

" On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners"

I leave the exercise in finding out what Murtha actually said to you.

Thom| 8.14.09 @ 8:12PM

Sheldon, I’m not referring to Gladney, that wasn’t the only Union Thug event in play.

Compared to most of our political history, what is appearing on these signs is tame by comparison. Has anyone actually tried to use a “weapon” to this point? Certainly people have used their fist and hands in violation of our laws.

My point about Frum being a Canadian is not about legal status but about mindset. You made the point about his Canadian upbringing and I agree he is a Canadian at heart and he taught Constitution Law at Harvard like King Obama. Two strikes.

As to taking a gun or any weapon for that matter to a “volatile situation” were any of these events advertised as a volatile event in advance? From my experience the volatile situation usually comes to you. Who determines when the event is volatile? A gun locked in a car trunk is not a volatile situation but breaking in and taken it could be seen as such from some corners of the world. Consider for a moment Sheldon that if Obama came here for same kind of event and appeared in any one of the publically legal places to carry a gun there would probably be as many legally concealed ones as open carried ones. Fact. This whole topic centers on seeing a “gun” and associating a message on a sign as a threat because of said visible gun. You should see some of my knives.

If Obama showed up at my door and wanted to have a “beer” along with his 25 Secret Service Agents, all armed to the teeth and I appeared at the front door with a weapon in a holster on my hip would that create a “volatile” situation? Not in my mind but I’ll put money on that should any such situation like that ever happen around King Obama the person with the weapon in the Open is going to be put down so fast with as much force as the Agents think is required to make your head swim. Will that create a “volatile” situation among certain quarters of this population? You bet.

Is taking a gun to a volatile situation foolish, you bet but it isn’t the gun that makes the situation and legitimate self defense does not take an hour off any where.

Personally, you couldn’t pay me a million dollars to be within a quarter mile of King Obama with a full EOD bomb suit on. You couldn’t print enough money to get me on his security detail. His list of enemies is growing from all corners of the world not just here.

As far as Canadian laws are concerned, not to worry. Most of what I own isn’t legal in your Nation and I wouldn’t set foot on your soil given a choice. It works best that way, Canadians stay in Canada and Americans stay in America. No one gets confused and arrested that way.

“behavior of the secret service on other occasions are irrelevant” not if you are the one on the ground because of their behavior.

It has been said by many of the Framers of our Founding documents and past Presidents to one extent or the other this, a government that does not trust the people certainly can’t expect the people to trust it. King Obama’s trust me I’m from the government meter reading is seriously in the red right now. We Americans have a tradition to uphold and perhaps we will. Canadians are completely free to be Canadians in their country.

Perhaps things will settle down in a few months or so and then town halls will be populated with citizens wearing suits and pretty pink dresses with each having a short two foot piece of garden hose wrapped around their waist. That’s when I’d run for cover.

Sheldon| 8.14.09 @ 8:24PM

Shooting fish in a barrel.

macdaddy| 8.14.09 @ 2:27PM

Two minutes this time. It's less of a distortion than with Senator Durbin but it is still wrong.

Damn that Obama he just won't keep to sound bites.

http://tinyurl.com/pacemaker-distortion

Sheldon| 8.14.09 @ 8:47PM

Kostric would have to be deaf, blind and unable to read braille to not know that this was going to be in a volatile situation. As he at least was able to speak words to Chris Matthews we know he isn't deaf. And there's no indication he was blind.

And considering that this was an open carry state, how come there weren't loads and loads of guns being openly carried. Sorry, no sale on self=defence. Hell, with the president of the US around and a massive police presence he's not worrrying about self-defence. Baloney.

Perhaps you'll have to take my word on this ---- but his sign for a town hall meeting with the president was intended to be understood by extremists as praising the example of Timothy McVeigh and his martyrdom and calling for similar action presumably against the president.

As to government not trusting the people ... huh??? You don't like Obama or you don't like Obama's policies after 6 months in power. From that you generalize to "the people" whatever that is not being trusted by the government.

Obama was elected with a mandate and he's trying to carry it out.

I'm not particularly pointing you out, but there's a danger to the United States when losers in an election ratchet up the rhetoric higher and higher. Granted that there aren't large differences between Democrats and Republicans, there still are real ones.

And the winners get to govern within the confines of the US Constitution.

Paul Crowley| 8.14.09 @ 9:15PM

“Before the age of sophistication, i.e, the 30s and 40s, we had doctors that would home visit.” [jr| 8.14.09 @ 5:59PM]

This statement is mess.

-->The “age of sophistication?”
What is this?
This phrase is new to me.

-->“the 30s and 40s.”
More sloppy and vague reference to an entire decade (here to two entire decades).
Teaching this phrasing to people (“the 60s,” “the 70s,” “the 1400s,” . . . facilitates sloppy thinking.

At any rate, if this so-called “age of sophistication” refers to the loss of small-business medical practices in America, then it is off at least three decades.

The entire country was covered with small medical businesses (small businesses in general) through to about 1979-83.

There was a burst of new ones between 1946-59. Small medical businesses as in doctor-owned general medicine practices (often referred to as family doctors), dentist-owned Dental practices and pharmacist-owned drug stores. .

All in a state of decline for 30 years now.
All gone for about 20 years now:
They died in the post-Cold War era, 1989 onward.

-->“home visit.”
The term was House Call.

The last House Call by a family doctor that I remember was when my oldest brother sprained his ankle quite badly in 1966 (which I don’t believe falls into the “30s and 40s” category).

1966 was the last time my family needed a House Call to be made.

I’ll guess, that we could have had one until at least about 1973 or so, when our family doctor moved to a larger building and expanded his practice (facilitated by the burst of access to financing at that time).

Definitely by 1975, the days of house calls by family doctors in the new Metropolitan areas were increasingly over

After the period 1987-93, the days of family doctors, as what family doctors used to be (general practitioners or internists who owned their own medical practice, usually working alone), in all of the new metropolitan areas, and the dieing small towns, across the U.S.A., were mostly over (the last of them were retiring, or had gone into bankruptcy, or had merged and formed Medical Clinics).

Following 1979-83, just as hospitals were reforming themselves into specialization’s (oncology, cardiology, burns treatment, . . . .), doctors were increasingly being reduced to employee status or had banded together into multiple-partner businesses.

Many of these are now unraveling and have been going belly up for at least the past ten years.

Thom| 8.14.09 @ 9:27PM

Sheldon, I’m trying to grasp this convoluted logic of yours. Law enforcement has a legal right to break up any situation they consider volatile if they have due cause and they have to be willing to stand behind that. A sign is not due cause and LE has already arrested/confronted/detained more than this guy for simple signs saying things the Secret Service took to be a threats and turned out to not be. This is trivial pursuit compared to the 1770-1800 time period when the principles of this government were formed out of a pretty blatant act of violence. If King Obama and Security detail start arresting everyone they see with a sign they don’t like you are going to be making Kostric’s points and his whole week. There is a recognizable line to not be crossed and my money is on King Obama’s forces moving first but there is no shortage of nutcases on both sides under the right circumstances.

“how come there weren't loads and loads of guns being openly carried” It is the individuals right to decide what is his level of risk tolerance not some third party bystander trying to interpret an event from a safe and comfortable distance of their world view. He carried it in a holster which is the same thing as carrying a sword in a scabbard. There is protocol for that. Had he showed with a rifle or shotgun slung over his shoulder or in the ready position the dynamics would have been very different and not passed the smell test for most. It was still his “right” so trying to judge him in light of that is a pointless game.

You seem so fascinated with Timothy McVeigh why? He is dead. He didn’t rat out anyone else as the play book rules were supposed to play out. He’s old news. The next McVeigh is going to have to work very hard to top his score don’t you think?

“don't like Obama's policies after 6 months in power” That’s a false assumption on your part. Actually I don’t like the Marist policies of his that have been creeping into this Nation for over 70 years. He is just the latest lying bastard as front man for the same evil that’s been around a real long time. What do you expect, a try it you might like it break in and warranty period for each new power grab by Marxist’s grand children? Its is 7 months in about 6 days and counting.

As to mandates, you are kidding right? 53% of the vote is a mandate to you? What does his polls dropping from 65% to 47% in 7 months tell you about polls Sheldon? Most people in this country get their news from their local newspapers; ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN combined are several times the size of Fox News and Talk Radio daily audiences. What mandate Sheldon? You are right in one sense he is trying to fulfill his mandates.

Morning comes early so good night….

Thom| 8.14.09 @ 9:34PM

Paul Crowley "All gone for about 20 years now:"
I think I saw the last one of these in the 80s and he was old. Everything is "Corps" now with not a single exception that I know of with maybe the exception of Dentist. The government mandated overhead kills any chance of a business being wrapped around the income stream one medical professional can make now it would seem to me.

Paul Crowley| 8.14.09 @ 9:50PM

“Ah yes, the period of the FDR presidency. Since them we have come a long way -- towards socialism, marxism, and communism. Do you do anything today that isn't monitored, controlled, restricted, or otherwise free of the gubermint?”

This is an idiotic statement (actually a composite of idiotic statements).

Most of the present-day regulations in the category of “monitored, controlled, restricted” being whined about in this manner began with the Nixon Administration.

So-called privatization and de-regulation also began in earnest during the second term of the Nixon administration and then privatization took off during the Carter administration (1971-80) (privatization during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations was especially virulent in the military and federal government).

De-regulation during the Carter administration facilitated the rapid spread of Walmarts, and the destruction and reformation of the American domestic oil and gas industry.

The period of the Ford and Reagan administrations was mostly building upon what was done during the periods of the Nixon and Carter administrations, respectively. During the Reagan administration it was the field day for contractors (that led to wide-spread corruption, such as the $75.00 toilet seats sold to the military).

The next burst of regulatory legislation, came during the G.H.W. Bush administration (1987-93).
It was also the period of dramatic reforms in the federal government and military (especially the use of females, thanks to the work of James Webb and Richard Cheney).

The next burst of so-called privatization and de-regulation came with a vengeance during the Clinton administration (1987-2001) (The same time that Walmart dropped its Buy American advertising and became a retail outlet for foreign manufactures).

None of this was, or is, socialism or communism. This, like the whines about "isolationists" is a lot nonsense. Just pre-emptive strikes via the Vitriol and Instruction propagated by the intellectual prostitutes.

It is the transormation of the United States of America into a country owned by a government.

From 1965-present the American government has been radically reformed, resulting in a highly centralized federal government, with state governments effectively reduced to district branch offices. Now the suburbs of the new metropolitan areas that were heavily expanded during this period, are being redubbed "small towns" and are effectively sub-district branch offices.

Both good and too bad for sub-district officer Sarah Palin and the rest of the girls.
She was born at the right time to be used as she has been, but too late to be a real mayor of a real town.

The small towns of America have been dying steadily since 1980, or transformed into suburbs of the the new metropolitcan areas, that the majority of the population has been herded into over the course of the past 39 years.

Paul Crowley| 8.14.09 @ 9:50PM

This is an idiotic statement (actually a composite of idiotic statements).

Most of the present-day regulations in the category of “monitored, controlled, restricted” being whined about in this manner began with the Nixon Administration.

De-regulation during the Carter administration facilitated the rapid spread of Walmarts, and the destruction and reformation of the American domestic oil and gas industry.

It is the transormation of the United States of America into a country owned by a government.

Both good and too bad for sub-district officer Sarah Palin and the rest of the girls.
She was born at the right time to be used as she has been, but too late to be a real mayor of a real town.

Paul Crowley| 8.14.09 @ 9:54PM

I apologize for the double post.

Lonnie| 8.14.09 @ 10:27PM

Sheldon the Canadian--STFU! We don't care what you think, lefty; butt out of our affairs. Would you like it if we stuck our nose in yours? The nerve of some nitwits.

Tina Marie| 8.14.09 @ 10:35PM

Ryan, are you stupid or evil? Perhaps both. What do you mean Terri Schiavo was already dead? She LIVED for 2 weeks without food or water before she died. She died of thirst and starvation; a slow, hideous death to be sure.

Stop lying you ugly little b@stard.

sheldon| 8.14.09 @ 10:39PM

Adios and Ciao Thom. Not much sense continuing when we talk entirely different languages.

Consider reading the book
American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City Bombing (2001) . The wikipedia entry has some more recent information proving beyond doubt that McVeigh did it.

It was better for the public when the militia spent their energy denying McVeigh did it. Now, I'm afraid they'll think of him as a martyr and a successful one --- there's been no more Waco's since OKC

Paul Crowley| 8.15.09 @ 12:33AM

--->Thom| 8.14.09 @ 9:34PM
“Paul Crowley ‘All gone for about 20 years now:’
I think I saw the last one of these in the 80s and he was old. Everything is ‘Corps’ now with not a single exception that I know of with maybe the exception of Dentist. The government mandated overhead kills any chance of a business being wrapped around the income stream one medical professional can make now it would seem to me.” [Thom| 8.14.09 @ 9:34PM]

Hi Thom:
I agree with you about the one individual. I don’t believe that it’s possible for a doctor to have his own practice any longer. Just like pharmacist owning his own drugstore, which was still common when I was a kid, is no doubt beyond possible today. As you say, there’s a few dentists still around in some places, but I suspect that these are the last. The closest thing to a small grocer in most places are 7-11 stores or gas stations.

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “government-mandated overhead.”

No question government legislation has brought all of this on. Which I don’t say as an attack on government.” I’m not a libertarian. I believe the libertarian movement is a gross sham, recognizing that many individuals at the same peon level as mayself are sincere. Government is indispensable. It’s the kind of government, and what it does and why it does it that’s important.

I believe the very sharp decline and steady death of small businesses over the course of the past 30 years has been primarily due to the big monopolies, which were made possible by the dramatic reform of the country’s lines of communication (road, rail, air, pipeline, information technologies. . . ). All of that was due to government legislation and most of the cost has been born by American citizens, via our national debt (and in the consequences).

Plain and simple, the entire country has been ripped apart, much of it de-developed, and much of it re-developed along the new distribution network, and reformed into a vast single economy (one being interconnected with similarly reformed countries, world-wide: or “globally”). To the contrary, until 30 years ago (1979), America was primarily an interconnected system of local and regional economies. It was already being changed, but definitely this was the case 40 years ago (1969).

It’s the domestic industries and local and regional business owners that have suffered and been mostly erased. The huge monopolies (the so-called multi-national corporations) have done fine, and grown steadily. For the most part, they’re the ones who destroyed the small businesses, which term has now been redefined.

All of this yap in recent years about Small Business began to confuse me too. I took a look in 2005 at the government websites and learned that “small business” has been vastly redefined. The definition is now primarily situational. A chemical company with 15,000 employees can apply as a “small business”these days! One in need of assistence from Federal agencies.

The multi-national corporations, and the select companies they’ve cultivated, benefit from government legislation, construction projects and often direct government aid and subsidies. This new radically reformed country has pretty much ensured that no real independent can compete. Heck, good luck trying to own an ice cream shop today!

But I’ll stand with what I said before, I don’t believe that these corporations own the government(s). They’re useful to it (them), and know perfectly well which side their bread is buttered on.

Domestic policy follows foreign policy. That's what concerns me most at the moment. What's the purpose of the drastic reform of the countries and the populations in this bloc of countries?

Paul Crowley| 8.15.09 @ 2:11AM

“And, now, we are in a ‘debate’ as to whether the 'Right to Life’ is to be rationed by a Federal Bureaucracy? . . . Are we serious? Really! Are we seriously debating our Right to Life v some few dollars? Dollars that we all know won't really be saved anyway?” [Bob| 8.14.09 @ 9:42AM]

Bob got this dead on right.

This is not about money.
Any claims of not being to afford decent medical care for all American citizens or claims of saving money are pure Horse Manure.

This is purely behavioralism: Conditioning, control and eugenics (i.e. More efficient use of Human Resources).

It’s effectively Human Husbandry.

The debate as its proceeding now is bogus.

Rationing has been implemented over the course of the past 20 years, especially the past ten, due to reforms of our legal code and legislation:

The actual rationing is simply administered via insurance companies. And this same government-corporate hybrid is what the Obama administration is advocating at the moment. So it looks like all of this is merely the process of institutionalizing what has already been established, probably with only a few minor modifications.

William| 8.15.09 @ 2:26AM

Sue wrote: "Privatize medicaid/medicare; don't socialize everyone's care."

Perfect. Except for one point. Government parasites could not batten off of such a straighforward and honest plan.

Nobama| 8.15.09 @ 2:41AM

Sheldon the Canuck has got American militias on the brain. Do they haunt your dreams and make you cry at night? They're your imaginary ghosts, libtard.

Of course, being the crazy leftist that he is, he doesn't even mention the Muslim fringe groups in the U.S.,--those are scary.

Leftists are so stupefyingly predictable, and what's even worse; he believes Wikipedia!

Emilya | 8.15.09 @ 3:08AM

ТЕМА ОЧЕНЬ ИНТЕРЕСНАЯ ЧИТАЛ С УДОВОЛЬСТВИЕМ СПАСИБО!!

Robert Rosencrans| 8.15.09 @ 6:46AM

When all the cows are herded into the same corral the moos of the cows in the corral will be drowned out by the cows being slaughtered in the slaughter house.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 8.15.09 @ 8:59AM

From the archives:

S.L. Toddard| 3.13.09 @ 11:58AM

JEREMIAH AND BOB: FYI - I haven't been posting here in over a month, since maybe Feb 2nd. There is a troll here who adopts other people's names and posts as them. I never called Bob "blow-bob" or whatever. I saw you also got into some scraps with him, Jeremiah. None of it was me. I don't use terms like "lib" or whatever else this clown said.
Imagine doing that - being that pathetic? Logging on and pretending to be someone else you only know through the internet? It's sad and the sort of thing one would expect of a stalker.
Anyway, none of the posts under my name - S.L. Toddard - have actually been me since the first couple days of February. It's been that same, sad, lonely troll.

hsr0601| 8.15.09 @ 10:15AM

Good News !

A staff writer at The New Yorker and some experts have examined Medicare data from the successful hospitals of 10 regions, and they have found evidence that more effective, lower-cost care is possible.

Please be 'sure' to visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !

Some have followed the Mayo model with salaried doctors employed, Other regions, too, have found ways to protect patients against the pursuit of revenues over patient.
And a cardiac surgeon of them said they had adopted electronic systems, examined the data and found that a shocking portion of tests were almost certainly unnecessary, possibly harmful.

According to analysis, their quality scores are well above average. Yet they spend more than $1,500 (16 percent) less per Medicare patient than the national average and have a slower real annual growth rate (3 percent versus 3.5 percent nationwide).

Surprisingly, 16 % of about $550 billion (the total of medicare cost per year) is around $88 billion per year, except for Medicaid (total cost of around $500 billion per year), medicare 'alone' can save $880 billion over the next decade.

In addition, under the reform package, along with the already allocated $583 billion, the wastes involving so called "doughnut hole" , the unnecessary subsidies for insurers, abuse, exorbitant costs by the tragic ER visits etc are weeded out, the concern over revenue (below) might be a thing of the past.

(( Net Medicare and Medicaid savings of $465 billion + the $583 billion revenue package = $1048 billion - the previously estimated $1.042 trillion cost of reform = $6 billion surplus - $245 billion (the 10-year cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don’t face big annual pay cuts) = the estimated deficit of $239 billion ))

In modernized society, the business lacking IT system is unthinkable just like pre-electricity period, nevertheless, the last thing to expect is happening now in the sector requiring the best accuracy in respect to dealing with human lives. Apparently the errors by no e-medical records have spawned the crushing lawsuits (Medical malpractice lawsuits cost at least $150 billion per year), and these costs have led to the unnecessary tests, treatments, even more profits so far. And in different parts of the U.S., patients get two to three times as much care for the same disease, with the same result.

Thank You !

Good News !

Please be 'sure' to visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13gawande.html?hp for credible evidences !

Thank You !

S.L. Toddard| 8.15.09 @ 1:41PM

Bill Hussein O'Stalin - I'd not visited the board for a while and then popped in and saw dozens of posts done in my name ridiculing Bob etc - with whom I agree on a number of thing. That same troll had posted in Bob's name and a couple other people's. I'm not positive why you're researching me, but if you find the very first posts of mine here you'll see that I have always been an opponent of big government liberal parties like the GOP and the Democrats.

ame| 8.15.09 @ 1:51PM

The article MISSES THE POINT - end of life is between a doctor and a patient - PERIOD.
Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are government PONZI schemes that make Madoff look like an amateur thief. That said, both are immoral and unethical and unconstitutional.
The way to bring down costs is to GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE HEALTH CARE BUSINESS AS IT DOES NOTHING BUT INCREASE COSTS AND ENCOURAGE CORRUPTION AND LOUSY CARE.
Bringing health care costs down is easy and when Congress and Obama won't do any of them, Americans are right to suspect being trampled by their Trojan Horse: Get government out of the business of health care, change Tort law (but politicians owe lawyers - John Edwards amassed his fortune chasing ambulances!), let insurance companies sell policy nationwide like car insurance is sold - government restrictions prevent this and, therefore, prevent portability even though they like to demonize big business. Allow insurance companies to sell group policies and group catastrophic coverage, but government won't allow it; all individuals and/or groups of people must get their own policies and business should not cover employees.
Americans should demand government does the above FIRST - easy to do, lowers costs, and gives access to all American citizens for affordable health care.
BUT government will NOT do what needs to be done and Americans know why - because Congress and Obama are not interested in solving the problem - what they want IS SOCIALIST CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES - they want access to our income for redistribution and enriching themselves, they want the power over our Constitutional liberties (remember that Obama considers the Constitution a hindrance - !!), they want to change our democratic-republic government to a socialist one. Obama lies, dissembles, equivocates and does not have any answers because HE KNOWS WE WOULDN'T STAND FOR HIS IDEOLOGY.
Americans should fight like mad men against Obama and Congress and then THROW THEM OUT. Americans are angry because they know their government as defined under our Constitution is being ripped to shreds by corrupt and immoral politicians and Obama is at the top of that list as leader of the Democrat Party.
Thinking people knew what Obama was and is right from the start, but gullible and ignorant voters put all this socialism in power and now we all have to fight like demons to get our country back. ObamaCare is juts the straw that broke the camel's back - FIGHT EVERY INCH UNTIL WE CAN THROW THESE POLITICIANS OUT. Obama and Congress seems to think this is government by, for, and of THEM - not by, for, and of THE PEOPLE.
FIGHT AMERICA or die slaves.

S.L. Toddard| 8.15.09 @ 1:54PM

"Privatize medicaid/medicare; don't socialize everyone's care."

They don't need to "privatize" it, they need to eliminate it, but I agree with the sentiment.

Here is the question though: do you support a party that wishes to eliminate socialist programs like medicare, medicade and social security, or do you support the socialist-program-loving Republicans? Because if you support the GOP that either makes you a hypocrite or a liar.

GOP supporters support socialism - that really is an inarguable fact, as the GOP actively maintains socialist government programs. I, of course, oppose the socialism of the GOP. Can anyone else here make the same claim, or are you all de facto socialists?

Sheldon| 8.15.09 @ 2:03PM

Eventually, I get round to my surprising rethink on a very relevant health care issue. Just read on a bit.

But first Re: Nobama| 8.15.09 @ 2:41AM

I haven't thought much about militias for years and years. Didn't mention muslim groups because they're not wrapped up in health care reform, gun rights and politicians, journalists and commentators lying anf fearmongering.

On the other hand, you, sir, were incomplete even when you put your mind to it. You left out extreme animal rights and environmental terrorism. Could it be because they're not wrapped up in health care reform, gun rights and politicians, journalists and commentators lying anf fearmongering.

I assume you throw in 'extremist leftist' as a way of pigeonholing me and that nothing can change my mind.

Well, there I have you. In the past, I have been involved in the skeptical and critical thinking movement. That helps create a mind set that you're, at the minimum, willing to have your mind changed by argument. That helps keep you aware of the closed mind's best friend: confirmation bias. Confirmation bias includes the echo chamber effect but goes farther.

Want proof: I'm at the The American Spectator website.

Best proof of all: I just changed my mind.
Here's the journey: Started with reading at some liberal website that a Republican senator had been quoted as sayng, "How someone [Palin] could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts."

I pay more attention when a posting uses direct quotes. It suggests that the author cares about accuracy and scholarship. And thanks to html links, its amazingly easy to find out if its true or not.

Follow the link and gosh, darn, there is Ezra Klein with a transcript at
http://tinyurl.com/said-palin-nut
Amazing.
Next, I follow my standard practice of poking around at a web site starting at the home page.

Why don't you try this now. Go to the home page and scroll down the page until you come tol
Posted at 2:45 PM ET, 08/14/2009
An Interview With Ezekiel Emanuel

Oh my god, the deadly doctor, the man who wants to kill grandma. The man named in Sarah Palin's facebook footnotes.

Skip the interview and go to the comments section. Near the bottom, you'll find a comment by shelgreen. And while my last name ain't close to green, that's me. Read on.

If you want to read the 1997 Atlantic Monthly article there's a link in the interview.

Here endth the journey, at least for now.

I found the interview difficult to understand because his answers are surprising and nuanced and disagreed with some of my preconceptions.

Go to the commen
If you want, leave out the interview. Follow the comments
Let's leave out the interview except to follow the link near the top to Emanuel's 1997 article in the Atlantic Monthly.

Which just happened yesterday

sheldon| 8.15.09 @ 2:05PM

I hate comment areas without preview.

Baby boomers left to die| 8.15.09 @ 2:12PM

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NEW YORK - Americans over the age of 55 are filing for bankruptcy at a faster rate than the general population as growing mortgage debt and higher health care costs make them more vulnerable, a new study shows.

The trend of rising bankruptcies among older Americans is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, according to the study’s authors, John Golmant and Tom Ulrich, researchers at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

They found that the aging of the population alone does not account for the rise in older filers and that “bankruptcy courts can anticipate an influx of new bankruptcy petitions as the baby boom generation continues to age.”

Health care & Broken Gov| 8.15.09 @ 2:19PM

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Article: MEDICARE CUTS THREATEN AREA NURSING HOMES BANKRUPTCY LOOMS FOR MANY THAT SERVE GROWING NUMBERS OF NEEDY PATIENTS.(Business)

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Nursing homes in Colorado are bracing for a 17 percent cut in Medicare payments that is likely to force some long-term care centers into bankruptcy.

The cut would reduce payments from $378 to $314 a day for Medicare patients at 175 nursing homes in the state. An estimated 430,000 Medicare patients are treated each year.

Colorado nursing homes would lose about $27.4 million a year from the Medicare cuts, forcing them to trim already slim staffs, stop providing certain services and jeopardizing delivery of quality care, administrators said.

``A cut that big would be very, very damaging to any ...

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Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN); August 28, 2002 ; Wolfe, Warren; 700+ words... reduce the average daily Medicare rate paid to Minnesota nursing homes from $326.13 to ... said Tuesday that the cuts certainly would hurt nursing homes and probably ... course of the year. But Medicare payment cuts would affect all nursing-home residents ...

Article: Medicare cuts putting strain on skilled ...

Central Penn Business Journal; November 1, 2002 ; Eckert, Sandy; 700+ words... reductions that close nursing homes will make accommodations ... funding gap created by Medicare cuts to nursing homes ... patients because of Medicare cuts, nursing homes also could face employment ... stay on the job. Medicare reductions could ...

Article: BUSH MEDICARE CUTS WOULD DECIMATE NURSING ...

Daily News (Los Angeles, CA); March 26, 2002 ; 700+ words... by looming cuts in Medicare payments to nursing homes, an industry ... compensation by Medicare is also limited, he said. Nursing homes advocates fear ... Congress made deep cuts in Medicare to balance ... estimated 3,000 nursing homes nationwide ...

Article: Nursing homes struggle with looming Medicare ...

San Diego Business Journal; April 8, 2002 ; Webb, Marion; 700+ words... according to local nursing home administrators ... D.C., found that Medicare payments to California nursing homes would be reduced by ... Opponents labeled the cuts, which could take effect Oct. 1, as the "Medicare cliff." Making matters ... Medicaid money, upon which nursing ...

Article: Medicare cuts could put nursing homes ...

Charleston Gazette; May 27, 2005 ; Michelle Saxton; 700+ words... Nursing homes in West Virginia and ... a year if proposed cuts in the Medicare and Medicaid systems ... of West Virginia's nursing homes have deficits ... residents. Daub said cuts could mean $15 to ... With about 350,000 Medicare patient days in West ... reimbursement for bad debt ...

Article: Nursing homes fight proposed Medicare ...

Bangor Daily News Bangor, ME; April 4, 2002 ; MICHAEL O'D. MOORE; OF THE NEWS STAFF; 700+ words... BREWER - Maine's nursing homes, fresh from having ... proposed 17 percent cut in Medicare payments to the facilities. The cuts would be harmful to ... individuals in the skilled nursing facilities that already ... organized to denounce the cuts and call on Sen. Susan ... A 17 percent cut in ...

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As USA faces Bankruptcy| 8.15.09 @ 2:24PM

home | Social Security/Medicare

Social Security and Medicare: The Twin Disasters That Will "Break the Bank"
Gary North
Here, you get an overview of the looming bankruptcy of the Social Security/Medicare system. Politically, they are one program, which Congress is unwilling to challenge.

The unfunded liability of the two programs is now about $83 trillion. See Table 2. (Print this out to view Table 2 horizontally. To make it fit on a standard computer screen, it's vertical here.)

To pay for Social Security and Medicare, the government would have to raise income taxes by 81%.

Today, the combined programs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid consume almost 50% of the U.S. government's budget. For a report on this, click here.

If you are willing to view a balanced, brief presentation using about 30 simple graphs to describe that is inevitably going to happen, click here.

There is no statistical escape from bankruptcy or default, either open or through inflation, yet Congress pretends that this is not inevitable. Why? Because voters will remove from office any Congressman who tells the truth about what is statistically irreversible. The question today is the form that the bankruptcy will take: outright default, mass inflation, or a salami-slicing reduction of benefits benefits.

The estimated deficit in Medicare as of fiscal 2008 is approximately $70 trillion (with a T). See the Congressional testimony of Prof. Kent Smetters.

USA Today ran a front-page story on November 15, 2005 on the looming crisis. The Comptroller General of the United States -- who monitors the government's financial books -- says the situation is "worse than advertised."

In 1955, the Social Security program was known by Congress to be statistically unsound. Nothing was done then to repair it, any more than anything will be done today . . . or tomorrow.

(I assume that you have signed up for my free Tip of the Week.)

For evidence of how Congress siphons off the trust fund money, refuses to count this massive borrowing as part of the official budget deficit, and then spends the money, see these sites:

M. W. Hodges's "Grandfather Report"

Empty Trust Fund

Accounting Trick

The Best Jobs in a Recession
Gary North
What must people buy, no matter how bad the economy gets? . . . keep reading

Work One Day . . . Collect $250/Month for Life from Social Security
Gary North
These people beat the system. . . . keep reading

A Clergyman's Security
Rev. Francis Mahaffy
This classic warning against joining Social Security was written by Rev. Mahaffy in 1957. It was a warning to ministers, who were being allowed to join the program. Today, ministers can opt out for moral reasons in the first year of their ordination. They should. . . . keep reading

Pingback| 8.15.09 @ 2:27PM

We have to face the fact that the President is not an honest guy « Jim Blazsik links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Michelle Malkin The Etiquette Czar’s Rules for Patriotic Protest By Michelle Malkin Giuliani: Obama only has himself to blame for health-care debate by Ed Morrissey Clown Hall Meetings – IBD Live or Let Die By Philip Klein Winds of change in San Francisco By Michelle Malkin LA Weekly: If you object to calling the Obama Joker poster racist, you’re probably racist Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)…

Wake up people Facsim is here| 8.15.09 @ 2:29PM

Why is it urgent to solve the Health cre and social security. The only thing Obama is honest about is Health care teh baby boomers is going to bring down Medicare & medicaide.

The Republican party dont care they are only trying to score political party points, while the country suffers.

The time is now to call time on the FED and take back America from those who wishes it harm.

A Banktupt American system| 8.15.09 @ 3:02PM

The Social Security Fraud
by Sheldon Richman, September 2001

Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill upset some people recently simply by telling the truth. He had the temerity to say that the Social Security Trust Fund has no tangible assets. It’s empty.

Such candor is not rewarded in Washington, D.C., the balderdash capital of the world. One of those who got upset was Rep. Charles Rangel, ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. Of course the Trust Fund has tangible assets, Rangel said. It’s full of government bonds. What could be more tangible than that?

Rangel was either showing his penchant for demagoguery or his ignorance. Tough call.

O’Neill is right. The Trust Fund is a figment of our collective imagination. There’s no “there” there. It doesn’t exist.

Every cent that the American people pay in FICA payroll taxes is immediately spent. Anything left over after the current retirees are paid off goes into the general treasury where it is used, first, to make up any operating shortfall, and then to pay the government’s creditors. The Social Security Trust Fund is credited for that money in the form of nonnegotiable bonds that purportedly earn interest.

What if there was no trust fund at all? When FICA revenues fell short of retiree benefits, as they will in about 15 years, the government would have four options: cut benefits, cut other spending, raise taxes, or borrow.

But under the current system, when revenues fall short the government will still have to cut benefits, cut other spending, raise taxes, or borrow.

In other words, there’s no difference between having the trust fund and not having it.

It’s worse than a fiction. It’s a lie. Rangel may believe Social Security holds tangible assets, but no one else who has taken a close look could possibly think that. From the start, Social Security propagandists, led by Franklin Roosevelt, have tried to make the American people believe the system was like any private-sector pension program. They called taxes — i.e., forced exactions under threat of imprisonment — “contributions” and conjured up the phony-baloney trust fund. They wanted us to think that the money we “contribute” is put away for us individually, somehow invested so that when we retire we can draw a return on our money.

Nonsense! There can’t be a return: our money is consumed and gone forever. All the politicians really promise is that when we retire they will tax someone else and give that money to us.

I guess you could say that Social Security really does hold tangible assets: the taxpayers. But that sounds more like a hostage-taking or slavery than a pension program.

They also made Americans believe that employers contributed to the system. What a crock! It only appears that workers “contribute” about 6 percent of their wages, matched by a like amount from their employers. In reality there is no way that employers can make a contribution. Anything they pay is simply another form of compensation to their workers. If there were no Social Security, that cash would go directly to employees. The employer contribution is another illusion in a thoroughly dishonest system.

It is true that the system “worked” for a long time. That is, retirees for many years collected more in benefits than they ever paid in while working. That’s because the postwar baby boom supplied many more workers than there were retirees and politicians strove to buy votes from senior citizens by taxing workers ever more and raising benefits ever higher. But that party is about to end. Before long there will be about two workers for each retiree. Something will have to give. Will the working generation put up with dramatically higher payroll or income taxes to support the retired boomers? Or will they demand that other government spending be cut? As the government consumes more and more scarce resources, how will Americans respond to the resulting slower economic growth or even stagnation?

These vexing questions are what FDR and his New Deal bequeathed to us. Maybe that new monument on the Washington Mall should have been dedicated to Charles Ponzi.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of Ideas on Liberty magazine.

Fraud in High places the FED| 8.15.09 @ 3:18PM

Peterson Hits Social Security Myths
September 27, 2000
Peter Peterson, former Commerce Secretary and founder of the Concord Coalition, lamented in the New York Times this week that in the coming election "what poses for debate on entitlements may be worse than no debate at all. The bidding and one-upmanship on the campaign trail could easily lock the new president into indefensible positions that block genuine and badly needed reforms."

"Why is there so little understanding of the long-term challenge? Two big myths are anesthetizing our judgment: Myth No. 1: Social Security is in good shape because it has a trust fund. We are often told that the trust fund will keep the system solvent until 2037 if we do nothing and, if we make some minor tweaks, it will last until 2075. Who could get excited over such a distant danger?

"What we are rarely told is that the trust fund is fiscally and economically meaningless, an accounting fiction; this money has already been spent. Its so-called assets are nothing but a stack of IOU's from the Treasury. By 2015, Social Security's annual costs will start to exceed its tax revenues by ever ballooning margins.

"Because this is a pay-as-you-go system, Congress would then have to raise taxes, cut other spending or borrow from the public to redeem the IOU's -- precisely as if there were no trust fund -- or else take a heavy hatchet to Social Security and Medicare at the very moment the huge boomer generation is moving into its elder years.

"Some argue that we can use the projected budget surpluses to pay off the IOU's. Alas, this isn't possible. The surpluses themselves may not materialize. For one thing, an economic downturn could easily turn the surpluses into deficits in just a few years. For another, the budget projections assume, implausibly, that discretionary spending will not grow faster than inflation -- in spite of major new commitments to defense and education.

"If the surpluses do materialize, much of the money is likely to be spent. Gluttons don't often turn down a free lunch. Presidential candidates and members of Congress rarely withstand the temptation to give away surpluses by increasing spending or cutting taxes. There's much talk of putting a "lock box" on the surpluses. But no one has yet designed a lock box that Congress couldn't pick. Even if the lock box works, the money in the trust fund is but a small down payment on future obligations.

"Myth No. 2: The New Economy will allow us to grow our way out of the problem. According to this myth, official projections, which point to a gradual slowdown in economic growth, are too pessimistic. The critics confuse pessimism with arithmetic. Economic growth depends not just on growth in productivity, that is, output per worker, but also on rising numbers of workers. By the 2020's, the labor force will be growing only about one-tenth as fast as in the last quarter century. Given the demographics, it would fly against all logic if economic growth did not slow.

"A better question is whether the official projections are too pessimistic about the growth in productivity. But keep in mind that even a huge boost in productivity won't do much to reduce Social Security's burden. According to Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, eliminating Social Security's long-term deficit would require a 200 percent increase in long-term productivity, a leap that few economists, even new economy enthusiasts, believe is possible.

"Our leaders face a choice. They can address the question of entitlements for the elderly while the economy is still booming and the budget is in the black, and before most baby boomers retire. Or they can delay until the window of opportunity closes. Either way, America will change course. If we act now, everyone, young and old, will have time to adjust and prepare."

2001 Index | 2000 Index | 1999 Index | 1998 Index

Nobama| 8.15.09 @ 3:44PM

Sheldon, you've got too much time on your hands, and too many preconceptions. What do Timothy McVeigh and militias have to do with ObamaCare and why did you bring them up? Hmmm?

Did you know that Obama's people falsely attributed authorship of the "Death Panel" provision to Senator Isakson and later had to retract their lie? And, regardless of what you think of "fear-mongering," Sarah Palin's efforts paid off in a big way!

I can only hope that ObamaCare tanks Obama's presidency.

Patriot| 8.15.09 @ 3:51PM

"And the winners get to govern WITHIN the confines of the Constitution." Exactly, Sheldon, and Obama isn't! That's why we're so upset.

Counterfeit Jews Ashkenazim| 8.15.09 @ 4:17PM

New York Times Reveals that European-Descended Jews are Counterfeits and have no Blood line to Abraham

The fact that most of those who call themselves Jews are not Jews and have no claim to the lands of Palestine because they have no genetic relation to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can no longer be suppressed. The October 29, 1996 N.Y. Times, in an article entitled, "Scholars Debate Origins of Yiddish and the Migrations of Jews," states:

"Arching over these questions is the central mystery of just where the Jews of Eastern Europe came from. Many historians believe that there were not nearly enough Jews in Western Europe to account for the huge population that later flourished in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and nearby areas.

"By reconstructing the Yiddish mother tongue, linguists hope to plot the migration of the Jews and their language with a precision never possible before.

"It has even been suggested, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that the Jews of Eastern Europe were not predominantly part of the diaspora from the Middle East, but were members of another ethnic group that adopted Judaism.

"...One linguist has recently argued that Yiddish began as a Slavic language that was 'relexified,' with most of its vocabulary replaced with German words.

"...Even more troublesome are demographic studies indicating that during the Middle Ages there were no more than 25,000 to 35,000 Jews in Western Europe. These figures are hard to reconcile with other studies showing that by the 17th century there were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe.

"...Some scholars believe the roots of Yiddish, and even the Ashkenazic people themselves, lie much farther east. In his 1976 book, The Thirteenth Tribe, Arthur Koestler made the startling suggestion, never taken seriously by linguists, that the Eastern European Jews were not really Semitic -- that they were largely descended from the Turkish Khazars, who converted en masse to Judaism in medieval times.

"More recently, Koestler's controversial thesis has been revived and expanded in a 1993 book, The Ashkenazic 'Jews': A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity (Slavica Publishers), by Dr. Paul Wexler, a Tel Aviv University linguist.

"Wexler uses a reconstruction of Yiddish to argue that it began as a Slavic language whose vocabulary was largely replaced with German words. Going even further, he contends that the Ashkenazic Jews are predominantly converted Slavs and Turks who merged with a tiny population of Palestinian Jews from the Diaspora."

(Emphasis supplied).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pingback| 8.15.09 @ 5:28PM

The Other Death Panels « Evynn’s Weblog links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…the “Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research” created by the stimulus. (How stimulated do you feel now?) As Philip Klein writes in his AmSpec piece “ Live or Let Die “, Tom Daschle cooked up the idea of a Federal Health Board based on the UK’s “National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence” (NICE). This is your basic “best…

RM| 8.15.09 @ 9:09PM

Terry's husband abandoned her - he had a new girlfriend and family. He "constructively" divorced her and he should not have been allowed to make any decisions regarding her care. He had an incurable conflict of interest.

If it is so damn "scarce" let's build more med schools, hospitals, clinics, nursing schools, etc.

People act like the supply of "healthcare" is finite. It is not. It will take time, and money but so what? Everything takes time.

They are talking about spending trillions on this. Why not increase supply while we're at it?

Also, the government has no rights to my medical records, nor to have any information with respect to how I live my life. Go away. Get your filthy hands out of our pockets and bank accounts and keep your laws off our bodies.

Roe v. Wade was not about abortion. It was about the Constitutional right to privacy. Agree with the decision or not, the government is breaking the law when it tries to insert itself between you and your doctor.

Sheldon| 8.15.09 @ 10:25PM

I worked on a long satirical piece about Isakson and death panels. Everything carefully sourced and putting in 'death panel' after every third word or so.

I may still put it up. It's funny enough to post elsewhere. But it's a pitiful example of American politics in action.

Anyone who wants to understand this whole mess can find it at Ezra Klein's blog at the washington post. Start from the top.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/

Consider it a test of open mindedness. The evidence presented there is overwhelming as to what happened.

Lucinda| 8.16.09 @ 12:26AM

RM, you're right about Schiavo's 'husband'. He also had access to a monetary settlement and didn't want to use it up caring for Terri. He's a real monster.

No one has the right to kill another human being: Not even a pregnant woman.

Nobama| 8.16.09 @ 12:30AM

Where did you get your 'evidence'? Wikipedia?

Pingback| 8.16.09 @ 4:23AM

Live or Let Die « links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…decisions evolve from something that is between you, your faith, your family, and your doctor, into highly-politicized issues that are the business of government and your fellow taxpayers. via The American Spectator : Live or Let Die. Recent Posts Live or Let Die Why health insurance is expensive Reply from Sen. Ben Nelson The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare Score One for Sarah Palin on the…

Manyuha | 8.16.09 @ 5:16AM

Отличная статья спасибо.

Kirill | 8.16.09 @ 6:06AM

Good news))))))))))

James A. Glasscock | 8.16.09 @ 7:28AM

Obama and government run health care remind me of the story of the caring visitor who visited a friend who was on oxygen. The caring visitor was so caught up in his part of the conversation that the patient, unable to speak, died. Why? The caring visitor was standing on his oxygen line.
Remember the old line: "I am from the government, and I am here to help." With Obama care, the caring visitor will stand on the oxygen link deliberately to cut costs of hospital stays and nursing and oxygen. As Obama says, the rising costs of health care are just too much.
Longdrycreek Ranch
Texas Panhandle

Tenn Slim| 8.16.09 @ 8:00AM

And as Daschle wrote, "Congress could opt to go further with the Board's recommendations. It could, for example, link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board's recommendations."
Daschle's comments "go further" embody the whole idea that the Left would impose.
1. Get an invasive legislation into the law.
2. Via amendments, add ons and regulations that specify invasive control, spread the Socialist web across the lives of the USA Electorate
Now. Despite the MSM smears, the You Tube misdirections of questioners. The USA Electorate senses this invasive spread. Underlying the specific questions posed, runs this undercurrent of concern, even fear. It is fear of Lives Being Controlled. If a questioner gets the mike long enough, this comes out loud and clear.
Finally. The Representatives faces show clearly that they have been exposed to reality. Not only are THEY exposed, the LEGISLATION is exposed and the INTENT is exposed. This is something the Left absolutely cannot live with. Transparency to them, is drink our Kool Aid. What has happened is that the absolute truth has and is, being laid out for even the most ostrich oriented citizen to see.
Semper Fi
end

SUE| 8.16.09 @ 8:08AM

It's Medicaid that pays for nursing home stays, not Medicare. You have to be destitute and spend down all your assets before you qualify. And, the equity in your house is assigned to the state.

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 11:45AM

Paul Crowley said, I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “government-mandated overhead.” Paul my local Clinic where my GP works is 1/3 Doctors, 1/3 Nurses/Techs. 1/3 Admin staff. In the 1950s, my GP Doctor’s office had one Doctor and one Nurse. Admin was done by part time offsite CPA. Many Doctors, particularly specialists pay more in maul practice insurance cost than most Americans make. Hospitals are target rich law suit rewards zones and the entire Healthcare system is one very large liability problem with an enormous legal cost associated with it. “government” mandates and the laws on the books put there enabled this. All this collectivism you see in the Healthcare industry to day is the result of trying to spread all the liability cost across a larger income stream. Why do you think we have a shortage of Doctors and Nurses going on two decades now given the reported income streams involved? Government drives up the cost of doing business (with the laws it put on the books) and the response to that is to try to “insure” our way out of that problem which is just consumers doing what the Medical Profession had already had to do to stay in business in the first place. That’s what I meant by that. No one sued my 1950’s GP.

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 12:06PM

Sheldon, your fascination with Timothy McVeigh is disturbing. About 99% of the people he murdered had no connection at all with the things that drove him. I view that the same way as the more common form of terrorism we see today all over the world. As for reading material suggestions Sheldon, I’d suggest you get an objective historical view of our history between 1770-1812 and be prepared to really be shocked with regard to civility. If quoting the third President of United States, pointing out that what took place at Waco (and Ruby Ridge) was a government abomination and packing “heat” legally under the law in the presence of King Obama bothers you for God’s sake never leave Canada.

S.L. Toddard| 8.16.09 @ 2:27PM

I will ask you people again: do you support a party that wishes to eliminate socialist programs like medicare, medicade and social security, or do you support the socialist-program-loving Republicans? Because if you support the GOP - which supports all of these socialist programs including the single-payer socialist healthcare program "medicare" - but oppose obama's plan on the grounds that it is "socialist", then that either makes you a hypocrite or a liar.

GOP supporters support socialism - that really is an inarguable fact, as the GOP actively maintains socialist government programs. I, of course, oppose the socialism of the GOP.

Can anyone else here make the same claim, or are you all de facto socialist hypocrites?

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 2:48PM

“GOP supporters support socialism - that really is an inarguable fact, as the GOP actively maintains socialist government programs.”

Neither the GOP when these programs were put in place by Democrats or their supporter now supports these programs Todd. You confuse “support” with pragmatic political reality that once implemented you have a dependent and captive audience that has the perfect right to vote against any and all efforts to undo the mechanism that enslaves tens of millions of people who will vote their own self interest pretty much all the time particularly when you are 60 years old and up.

What you confuse here is resistance to more of this vs. blatantly advocating simply tearing down the existing ponzi schemes and letting the law of the jungle work its magic. Let’s hear your solution put into concrete form behind a political movement and see how well that goes over with the 40 million + voter slaves already being supported by these programs.

Patriot| 8.16.09 @ 3:33PM

All Toddard does is attack--the moron NEVER offers constructive alternatives. It's easy to be a naysayer; it's not so easy to offer solutions.

Boring.

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 3:54PM

The insidious nature of wealth transfer programs, regardless of the sweet sounding name they go under, has been known since the time of the ancient Greeks…. Before that we just can’t find enough stone tables to document what when on.

The societal “cost” to undo them is pretty well known too and there are no smiley faces in the range of options. We’ve been promising what we can’t afford for going on 70 years and there are no “miracle bubbles” on the board. These plans do for those that advocated them exactly what they intended, capture votes and power at that time. Some people’s idea of a solution is comparable to trying to save a Brontosaurus from a T-Rex with a two by four….. You either get stomped to death, eaten for your trouble or probably both.

Wisdom and respect for that (encoded in our Constitutional form of government) would have prevented us getting here. The “math” has never been on the side of those that advocate these things. A government cost estimate projection has the same merit as a used piece of toilet paper being used as a sanitary wound dressing. A whole lot of water has gone over the dam since 1935 and the beginning of this slide into the abyss. Abysses have a nasty habit of having uncertain depths and bottoms. Every time 3 Wolves and 2 sheep have voted to see what was on the dinner menu the sheep have ended up being eaten and the Wolves happy for about a week. The week after two of the Wolves start seeing a sheep in wolves clothing and so it goes for about two more weeks and then the course is run….

There is nothing wrong with being upset or getting angry about all “this” but wishful thinking is no substitute for a workable solution, if there is one. It is not written there is even a workable solution. At some point there will not be. As I said the “math” has been against all this from day one, over 3500 years ago as written. We’ve been feeding the wrong “wolf” as some Native Indian tribes put it and now can’t seem to come to grips with why we are getting eaten on all the time.

No workable solution = law of the jungle next.

S.L. Toddard| 8.16.09 @ 5:40PM

"Neither the GOP when these programs were put in place by Democrats or their supporter now supports these programs Todd. You confuse “support” with pragmatic political reality"

False. The GOP actively supports those programs now - no GOP senator plans to eliminate these programs. During the dozen years the GOP controlled the House and Senate and the 8 years Bush occupied the White House they made absolutely NO moves to repeal these socialist programs and voted repeatedly to extend them.

Please answer the question, Thom: do you support a party or candidates that wish to eliminate socialist programs like medicare, medicade and social security, or do you support the socialist-program-loving Republicans? Because if you support the GOP - which supports all of these socialist programs including the single-payer socialist healthcare program "medicare" - but oppose obama's plan on the grounds that it is "socialist", then that either makes you a hypocrite or a liar.

I await your answer.

JimE| 8.16.09 @ 5:51PM

Toddard Anus,
I support neither, but I do support putting people like you who file false disability claims because they are too lazy to work and believe they are entitled to a free ride into forced labor camps.

S.L. Toddard| 8.16.09 @ 5:53PM

"All Toddard does is attack--the moron NEVER offers constructive alternatives..."

If you seek my guidance, "Patriot", then please do not be afraid to ask. Cowardice is not the path to wisdom - humility is.

The solution is simple: support *only* candidates and office holders that are conservative. If you do not, then you are a de facto liberal/socialist. That means never, ever voting for a candidate who does not pledge and/or actively work to end these socialist programs (and all socialist programs), seal the border (which would mean building and guarding a border wall across the entire mexican border), and drastically reduce federal spending to a literal fraction of what it is while reducing taxes proportionately to create a balanced budget. That will certainly mean depriving the GOP of your vote, and voting 3rd party, or writing in candidates, or leaving certain portions of your ballot blank, and in the short term will mean costing the socialist GOP your vote. Should en0ugh GOP voters do this - i.e. become conservative - then to win elections the GOP must needs abandon their socialist policies and become a conservative party as they were half a century and more ago.

Or you can do as Thom does - hypocritically support socialist programs with your vote while pretending to oppose them when they are enacted and proposed by the Democrats. Thom is (obviously) not a "conservative" - he is a party loyalist, loyal to a socialist party; in other words, a socialist.

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 6:04PM

“Thom: do you support a party or candidates that wish to eliminate socialist programs like medicare, medicade and social security”

I will support a movement that has a workable solution that doesn’t result in the law of the jungle as a result. I gave up on a workable political solution over 20 years ago after it was agreed to raise my ponzi scheme taxes a combined 250% over 30 years in order to “save” the system for the 12th time since inception. The Ponzi scheme will need about a 21% starting in 2016/2018 to pay its bills another decade or two….

News flash Todd, there is no workable political solution beyond “tax the rich more, and give to the poor” less unit the Nation falters and collapses into ruin at this point. No one has a realistic solution, no one. It’s all in the “math” that doesn’t bend to political will.

You certainly don't have a solution for anything but at least many more now understand what Einstein meant when he said if you repeat the same action everyday expecting a different result that is a pretty good idea of insane (as a paraphrase of his thoughts on that).

S.L. Toddard| 8.16.09 @ 6:09PM

"I will support a movement that has a workable solution that doesn’t result in the law of the jungle as a result."

That's odd. I didn't ask what you "will support", I askwe what you *do* support. Precisely, I asked if you support a party or candidates that wish to eliminate socialist programs like medicare, medicaid and social security, or do you support the socialist-program-loving Republicans? Because if you support the GOP - which supports all of these socialist programs including the single-payer socialist healthcare program "medicare" - but oppose obama's plan on the grounds that it is "socialist", then that either makes you a hypocrite or a liar.

Why are you so afraid to answer the question? It is the Socialists need to dodge and spin, Thom. Conservatives embrace honesty and decency. Try it and see if you like it.

I await your answer.

the-gunslinger | 8.16.09 @ 6:42PM

ame,
THE ISSUE HERE IS FREEDOM - IT IS PROTECTING AND PRESERVING OUR DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLIC CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, NOT END OF LIFE CARE.

You have just stated the core issue. It's not about health care. It's about Liberty.

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 6:43PM

Todd, newsflash there are only “two kinds of people” where as political decisions are concerned and you aren’t a third kind. We’ve got 230 years of data points on how well “third kinds” work out politically.

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 7:08PM

If you pay or have paid any form of taxation you are “supporting” what you rail against. Solution, stop paying taxes of any kind. I’ve suggested this solution to many people including some very wealthy ones and not got a single taker. The beast dies if you don’t feed it; works every time it is tried. Please demonstrate your convictions to your “conservative” principles. If you don’t work/pay taxes now or in the past well then you are living off someone else’s dime and a perfect example of the problem that got us here….

About 13% of the population now depends on 1.2 trillion dollars of taxes and this will double in a decade. The horse is long out of the barn for academic nitwit arguments. This argument was lost in 1913 and short of an armed revolution the thrust of what you suggest will lead to a whole lot of oxen being slaughtered. It may come to that but I see no need to sign on to a suicide pact and rush it along.

If the GOP voted in 2010 as you suggest, we wouldn’t need another election in my life time because 90% of Congress would be in Democrat hands for as far as the eye can see and then a bit further.

Less than half a percent are buying what you are selling in the political market place and over 40% don’t even bother to vote for or against anyway. If you can’t demonstrate specifics on how your grand plan will be implemented and save us I suspect those same 99.5% that don’t listen to you now will continue to do the same. Grand statements and flowery terms are cheap but solutions cost. They cost a great deal in fact. Far more than I suspect you comprehend.

No more “debate class” tactics Todd. I have no time for pointless academic exercises. The real world is not run by political theories. No more responses if you continue this track….

Sheldon| 8.16.09 @ 7:14PM

re:Thom| 8.16.09 @ 12:06PM
"About 99% of the people he (McVeigh] murdered had no connection at all with the things that drove him"

Presuming you write to inform and persuade there are two important things to remember.

1. You need a good crap detector
2. Use the results of your crap detector to seek out and find some measure of 'truth' before you post.

We both agree that McVeigh was the bomber.

Your Statement .. 99%....

Crap detector test: There's a world of possible targets to bomb. The Murrah building held lots of government employees and certainly visitors not connected to law enforcement. So not likely McVeigh's beef was just with specific government agencies at Ruby Ridge or Waco .

Crap detector goes Bing Bong --- unlikely 99% is true most likely crap.

At this point, if I decided not to go to further, I wouldn't post anything about this on the internet.

But I'm interested. Google McVeigh,, go to wikipedia.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. And as encyclopedia and as stated by wikipedia, iit doesn't want original research and only wants secondary sources.

There'll you find a section on McVeigh's motive. You can even find something fair and balanced because it doesn't involve the echo chamber.
Follow that link and eventually you'll l find this sentence.
"Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. "

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 7:23PM

Seldon, so your point here is that "about 99%" is inaccurate and that invalidates my point? Please provide an “accurate” percentage of the dead and injured that apply then? You can’t thus your point is pointless nitpick.

S.L. Toddard| 8.16.09 @ 7:25PM

"If you pay or have paid any form of taxation...etc"

That's all wonderful and fascinating and so forth - thanks, really - but it hardly answers my question, which was: do you support a party or candidates that wish to eliminate socialist programs like medicare, medicaid and social security, or do you support the socialist-program-loving Republicans? Because if you support the GOP - which supports all of these socialist programs including the single-payer socialist healthcare program "medicare" - but oppose obama's plan on the grounds that it is "socialist", then that either makes you a hypocrite or a liar.

Come now, Thom. Answer the question.

Thom| 8.16.09 @ 7:30PM

Seldon, I’ve got some up close and personal experience with “senseless” murder some 40 years ago. I learned quickly to forget trying to get into said murderers head seeking a rational or motivation for what moves them. I know all I’ll ever need to know about McVeigh and you won’t find what I know in any encyclopedia. You really need to put your efforts into something more constructive while you still have some choice in the matter.

Sheldon| 8.16.09 @ 7:36PM

While my views tend one way, I'll sometimes complain about lazy, ignorant commentators even if their conclusions are correct and fact checking organizations that promote them.

Watch the video and read my comments at
http://tinyurl.com/cant-read-1544-words

Anyone here then care to correct anything?

Nobama| 8.17.09 @ 12:46AM

What's with the McVeigh nut anyway? What's your point, looney tune?

Dude, the creep is DEAD--haven't you heard? You've got some weird fixation on the guy and it's spookin' me out.

Tatiana | 8.17.09 @ 5:23AM

Спасибо отличная тема правда с переводом были проблемы

Pingback| 8.17.09 @ 10:07AM

Right Wing Nut House » THE SLIPPERY SLOPE REVISITED links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…being valid by showing how such “paid for by Medicare” sessions can indeed go far beyond what proponents of the provision - including yours truly - have argued. Philip Klein writing in the American Spectator voices qualified support for the idea of end of life counseling (employing the Schiavo case as I did), but then, in a logical and reasonable fashion, demonstrates how the government might use that…

Pingback| 8.17.09 @ 10:12PM

The Other Death Panels | PAWaterCooler.com links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…else out there that is better deserving of the “death panel” moniker: The “Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research”. Red State has a good write-up, as does AmSpec. (I posted my own brief take on the AmSpec piece at Doubleplusundead.) These Death Panels (and yes, I think that’s ever so slightly hyperbolic, sorry Andy McCarthy ) will not descend on you personally…

Schiavo's fate| 8.18.09 @ 10:01AM

Ryan| 8.14.09 @ 10:57AM
"...the autopsy revealed how far gone she [Terri Schiavo] really was at the end...Schiavo wasn't starved to death - she was dead already."

The autopsy revealed the horrors that she went through during the final 13 days of her life. You'd be "far gone" at the end too, if you'd gone through what she did. If euthanasia by such a method is painless and humane, as some people have claimed, why is it against the law to do it to an animal?

If she was "dead already," why hadn't she been buried? Why was she kept in a hospice bed for a decade and a half after she "died"? Because she wasn't dead. She was a healthy young woman with a cognitive disability.

But before the courts carried out her adulterous husband's wishes, Terri (who became cognitively disabled after she collapsed in 1990) was not dying, nor was she in a coma, nor was she on life-support equipment (such as a ventilator). She was breathing on her own.

Her husband, Michael, won $1.3 million in a malpractice case, and promised to use $750,000 to take care of her for the rest of her life. But she received no physical therapy or rehab after 1991, and no tests after 1993 -- that's 14 and 12 years before she was euthanized in March 2005. Her teeth were not cleaned after 1995 -- ten years before she was euthanized. She had not been allowed to go outside the hospice since 2000.

You wouldn't treat a dog that way, would you?

Schiavo's fate| 8.18.09 @ 10:19AM

Among the many evil things that Michael Schiavo did concerning his disabled wife was to have her tombstone inscribed with these words: "Departed this Earth / February 25, 1990" and "At Peace / March 31, 2005." The implication is that once her brain was injured and she was no longer functioning like most of us, she was no longer one of us. Pretending that she had "departed this Earth" made it easier to pretend that it was okay to kill her.

Like Ryan, Michael wrote Terri off as "already dead" 15 years before her execution by euthanasia.

There are millions of Americans who have severe disabilities; are they dead, too? And if so, why haven't they been buried?

Taiska | 8.19.09 @ 1:44PM

There are millions of Americans who have severe disabilities; are they dead, too? And if so, why haven't they been buried?

Shel| 8.19.09 @ 10:22PM

re:Thom| 8.16.09 @ 12:06PM
"About 99% of the people he (McVeigh] murdered had no connection at all with the things that drove him"

Baloney. Absolute baloney. McVeigh's target wasn't just the ATF, FBI and IRS. It was the government itself.

Here's an explanation for the bombing circulating on the internet.

--start quote --
Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. (see enclosed) Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective, what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal , no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy, or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel.)
--- end quote---

How'd I find that quote? After reading "American Terrorist" and the whack jobs proclamations that the book was all lies. I lost interest in McVeigh. But recently, I decided to look at what was written on the bombing and McVeigh.

Top of the search page a link to wikipedia's entry on McVeigh. Contents literally*blew my mind. I''d either forgotten or not known that McVeigh had personally written letters to the media explaining his actions.There was even a link to a fair balanced report at
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,17500,00.html from which I took the quote above.
*well figuratively

Avdulya | 9.8.09 @ 7:04AM

Thank you! So nice!

Trackback| 9.17.09 @ 5:40AM

Affordable Homeowners Insurance, on Affordable Homeowners Insurance, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

While many individual home owners believe that the best homeowners insurance policies come from those companies which represent household names, such policies are often more expensive than those offered by their smaller competitors.

Valya | 10.21.09 @ 3:25AM

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Dekabrinka | 10.28.09 @ 2:54PM

Thank's for good article!

Pashata | 10.30.09 @ 8:02AM

Very interesting! THANK'S

Nayusya | 11.4.09 @ 4:45PM

Big thank's! Cool!

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