The Policing of Healthcare - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The Policing of Healthcare
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CORRECTION
Re: Mark Tooley’s A Turner Classic:

I wanted to make a clarification to Mark Tooley’s article, “A Turner Classic.” In the last paragraph, Tooley stated that World Vision was the “NAE’s relief agency.” That statement is inaccurate. World Vision is an independent Christian humanitarian organization. While we partner with a number of agencies and organizations, World Vision is run by an independent board of directors and is not affiliated with any particular denomination.

Thank you for clarifying that with your readers.
Amy Parodi
Media Relations Manager
Corporate Communications
World Vision, United States

The Editor replies: We apologize for the error. The article incorrectly and inadvertently identifed World Vision as the NAE’s relief agency. It meant to name World Relief, a different organization. The article has been changed to reflect the correct name.

HE FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON
Re: William Tucker’s There Are Towns a Lot Tougher Than Cambridge:

You are right. He’s lucky he wasn’t dealing with New Orleans cops. I know a Tulane Professor who has permanent brain damage as a result of mouthing off to a New Orleans cop. And he was white.
— Paul

I’LL TAKE THE KENNEDY PLAN
Re: David Catron’s How Much Is a Year of Your Life Worth?:

The president says we are committed not to “rationing” but to realistic decisions about end of life treatments and decisions regarding whether or not a treatment for an older person is “worth it.” Fine. When I reach the point in life where we have to decide about additional tests and treatment and worth all I want is the level of testing and treatment that Ted Kennedy has had for the past year and continues to receive.

As far as cost savings and efficiency, I think all members of Congress, Cabinet officers and the president should pledge that they will give up their pensions if cost savings in health care don’t materialize as projected when the healthcare bill passes. After all, they all seem to be very confident this is going to work.

In fact, let’s right it into the law. It will be interesting to see how many members of Congress vote for healthcare then. Maybe we should have each of them pledge all of their government pensions (Federal, State and Local)….
— Norm Astwood
Peoria, Illinois

QALY is a perversion of a worthwhile approach for evaluating health benefits of environmental interventions. It is an abundantly stupid approach and should be discarded.
— Glenn Niblock

WELCOME BACK
Re: Ben Stein’s We’ve Figured Him Out:

Where were you when we needed you? You are a little late for the dismantling of our great country.
Many of us had this Obama construct figured out a long time ago, but we were ridiculed, dismissed as racists and not heard. Now get ready for this Marxist to dismantle as much of the free world as he possibly can, in as short a time as he can. Israel will be the next to suffer and will suffer the most — those miserable Democracies who owe the world so many apologies.

Thanks for getting your head clear, must have been discomforting where it was, try and keep it that way Ben.
— Jim Park
Prescott, Arizona

FORGING MEDIA SUBSTANCE
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.’s More Media Follies:

Bob Tyrrell and numerous other “Bobs — see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil Obama supporters” of TAS are probably right about Obama being a natural born US citizen but I can’t prove it either way. I can prove beyond a doubt that my 1952 issued white on black birth certificate copy and all the raised seal State issued copies are forgeries. In fact, I’ve suspected my original copy of my birth certificate was a forgery since age 11 and wasn’t given the actual proof of that until the late 90s. Two clues, one being biology based and the other that the original copy certificate itself led to that conclusion 35 years before the truth was revealed to me. All of my immediate and extended family knew the whole time and never revealed it to me, even to this day 57 years later.

Those same certificates with all sorts of dates, times, places and signatures to the accuracy of the contents have been used for countless security/background checks throughout my life. In fact, I can’t work where I’ve worked for over 8 years without being a US Citizen/US Person and have got to prove all this again for a new federally mandated badge in order to keep my job where I’ve already proved this several times before. Being a natural born citizen on top of this is reserved for important things like being president….

I A.S.S.U.M.E that there was an announcement of my birth in a newspaper in the city of the state where my birth certificate says I was born. If so, you won’t be able to identify it as me. By now some have figured out what is up here and it certainly applies to Obama no less with an important difference. I’m adopted and the parents listed on my birth certificate are not my real birth parents and my records are sealed under law to protect that information from me. Had my surviving adoption mother not given me the proof a few years before her death at age 81, I would not have this truth and a nominal way of determining it due to statutory laws in the state where I think I was born. Other than making filling out family history info on buckets full of medical forms over the years moot this fact has never impacted my life one way or the other. I’ve certainly not spent a single dime trying to open up my sealed birth records or preventing them from being opened either. Of course, I’ve not run for President where the Constitution is extra ordinary in requiring not just a citizen but a natural born one at that. Fortunately, no controlling legal authority has asked me if my birth certificates are true and accurate. What a box of worms that would open up with Homeland Security today…
Given the depths Obama has gone to pour out his sorted life’s story in print, it makes no rational sense to go to all the lengths he has gone to keep virtually his entire early life’s paper trail sealed away including his certified birth certificate. The last Democratic president went to similar lengths and lied repeatedly under oath about a personal matter that doesn’t even rise to the door step of this matter. No one made the case he didn’t lie under oath but most of his supporters excused his behavior by saying essentially everyone does that sort of thing (under oath no less).

A true Machiavellian might play this kind of head game for political purposes but if I even hinted at any sense of false information or deception in this regard I’d lose my job and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Anyone having had to go through a secret clearance knows how well trying to keep prying eyes out works with that. Most security people aren’t amused with any pretense or deception. Any pretense or deception on my part for a simple background check would result in serious consequences. We’ve seen how “process” crimes are handled at the Federal level.

This matter on one hand is certainly trivial and silly but on the level of the Constitutional principle involved it is certainly not trivial. “Congress shall make no law…” and similar phrases gets lip service by the same people that see this matter as pointless. We issue Driver’s licenses to millions of convicted criminals and frauds on a rather consistent basis and suffer wide scale fraud (voter, identity, check cashing, etc) every year because the process to tie identity to a true person is not reliable enough and consistent enough from one state to the other to be proof of anything other than you have a document called a driver’s license, which may be a forgery. I have several official birth certificates that are forgeries because that was the practice at the time of my birth for adoptions in the state I was reportedly born in. Does it change anything under the law that I do know they are forgeries? Probably depends on who is asking the question.

If Obama is “legit,” then he is playing a dangerous mind game that will not serve him well down the road. Trust once lost is very difficult to earn back particularly public trust. If he is not actually a natural born US Citizen and knows (or suspects) this, then we are equally on dangerous grounds here. I’ve got half dozen security related things hanging from my neck to just do my job and enter the building where I work and Christ himself could not legally enter here without the proper citizenship status and other related certificates. Neither could Obama. Showing up at my door without the proper security documents, etc and demanding to be let in because he is the president isn’t going to float the boat.

For me Obama is either playing a sick kind of narcissistic game with his detractors for pointless political purposes or has something to hide, neither of which is the action of a man of virtue. An honest, secure, mature, transparent person would not act as Obama does. Those of us who have to spend all the time, effort and yes money to jump through all the security hoops to just have a “job” can’t help but see the double standard of a man that seems to think he is above the law simply because…

As “for trivial nature of the contemporary American news media” I would ask Bob Tyrrell two questions. One, when has American News media not been primarily focused on trivial matters at the expense of substance and depth? Two, can you find my birth announcement anywhere in the country in 1952? If not, it might have something to do with being adopted 6 months after my birth in a state where neither my birth parents nor adoptive parents lived at the time… God help us if someone in the Media should actually ask Obama a question of substance… and even better know what an answer of substance sounds like.

If you find a birth announcement for me say in Kenya, Bob, I really don’t want to know. Forget I every asked. Too many problems that would cause me…
— Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

DEFENDING DR. NO
Re: Philip Klein’s AARP’s Got Their Back:

To paraphrase the left’s favorite uncle, Joe Stalin, when the (Democratic) Congress hangs the elderly, the AARP will sell Congress the rope they use.

The AARP’s is blindly buying Obama’s socialist health care power grab rhetoric. The AARP leadership is expecting that the government will hold the best interest of the citizenry, especially their elderly constituents, as its primary goal. History does little to support this position… While The One and his merry gang of spendthrifts have no problem spending our money, they do so with a focus on what benefits their Prince and his followers. Conversely, bureaucrats keep their eyes on the bottom line: saving money for their department (or little fiefdom) gets them promoted. When government boards measure “comparative effectiveness research,” they will quickly find that caring for the elderly is expensive, much more expensive than caring for younger cadres of people. The boards will cut elder care in the name of savings, and since the boards are selected, not elected, they cannot be held responsible by the voters. The road to health care rationing is shovel-ready now.

Many Republicans will be intimidated by the AARP support of sweeping health care reform. The GOP representatives will be well-served by remembering that they received little love from the over 55 crowd after they voted for Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill. Further, RINOs lost the respect and votes of economic conservatives for supporting the biggest increase in Medicare spending since its initial inception. The only way for Republicans to make gains in the upcoming midterm election is to stand up for their true principles of free choice and free enterprise.

The minority may not be able to stop the majority juggernaut this time, but they can take up arms for the cause. They can make a stand that clearly demonstrates that too often political moderation is equivalent to capitulation.

Sometimes it pays to be the Party of the No.
— Ira M. Kessel

I ask, did Mr. Barry Rand read the health care bill? Seniors will bear the brunt of this legislation. As many know, age brings on many diseases, genetics anyone?
–Roman

MO WHITE PEOPLE
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s The Unbearable Witness of Maureen Dowd:

Oh this is so rich, so real. I get to roll on the floor laughing while holding my sides as I simultaneously grasp the unveiled reality of the unbearable whiteness of hypocritical self-deceived White Mo as she pontificates from on high, from the white tower in the blindingly white clouds over NYC. Nail On Head. Thank you.
— Gayle Sherburne

Mr. Lord’s evisceration of Ms. Dowd and the New York Times was so enjoyable that I actually gave money to The American Spectator. His prose was sparkling!

Although I’m delighted that Ben Stein loves dogs, I gave solely because of Jeffrey Lord’s piece.  Keep up the excellent reporting.
Ed Sabec

ACTORS AND FALSE PROPHETS
Re: Reader Mail’s Angry White Liberals:

Casablanca Recast: ACORN headquarters replaces the set for Monaco and Rick’s Café while Obama stars as Captain Renault and the Democrats of Congress play the corrupt police force. All this works, but sadly, the Republicans lack both a leading man to star and the extras to fill in for the resistance. Truly a historical tragedy.
I.M. Kessel

First, we have Jane Roberts and her letter supporting UNFPA. Then we have a column entitled “Beware False Prophets.” Interesting.
— Michael Skaggs
Murray, Kentucky

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