Allen

30th November 2009

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We need to get these bills fixed if we plan on ever getting reform passed

Health bills fail to block illegals from coverage

Posted on 30 November 2009

Marsha Blackburn Voted FOR:
Omnibus Appropriations, Special Education, Global AIDS Initiative, Job Training, Unemployment Benefits, Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations, Agriculture Appropriations, U.S.-Singapore Trade, U.S.-Chile Trade, Supplemental Spending for Iraq & Afghanistan, Prescription Drug Benefit, Child Nutrition Programs, Surface Transportation, Job Training and Worker Services, Agriculture Appropriations, Foreign Aid, Vocational/Technical Training, Supplemental Appropriations, UN “Reforms.” Patriot Act Reauthorization, CAFTA, Katrina Hurricane-relief Appropriations, Head Start Funding, Line-item Rescission, Oman Trade Agreement, Military Tribunals, Electronic Surveillance, Head Start Funding, COPS Funding, Funding the REAL ID Act (National ID), Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, Thought Crimes “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, Peru Free Trade Agreement, Economic Stimulus, Farm Bill (Veto Override), Warrantless Searches, Employee Verification Program, Body Imaging Screening.

Marsha Blackburn Voted AGAINST:
Ban on UN Contributions, eliminate Millennium Challenge Account, WTO Withdrawal, UN Dues Decrease, Defunding the NAIS, Iran Military Operations defunding Iraq Troop Withdrawal, congress authorization of Iran Military Operations.


Marsha Blackburn is my Congressman.
See her unconstitutional votes at :
http://tinyurl.com/qhayna
Mickey

Gallup: Opposition to ObamaCare almost at majority … of adults

posted at 8:48 am on November 30, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Whatever uncertainty Americans feel about ObamaCare has begun to dissipate, and in the wrong direction for Barack Obama and the Democrats.  Over the last month, the number of undecided respondents on Gallup’s question of whether American adults would advise their Congressman to vote for or against ObamaCare slid 11 points, while the overall disapproval of the bill itself hit 49%, as opposed to 44% approval:

Americans currently tilt against Congress’ passing healthcare legislation, with 49% saying they would advise their member to vote against a bill (or they lean that way) and 44% saying they would advocate a vote in favor of the bill (or lean toward advising a yes vote). …

Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed to new healthcare legislation — 86% would advise their member of Congress to vote against it, while 12% would want their member to support it. Democrats, on the other hand, favor it by a 76% to 17% margin. Independents oppose passage of a bill by 53% to 37%.

Support among all three party groups has declined since the early October high — falling by 6 points among Democrats, 8 among independents, and 12 among Republicans. However, Democratic support recovered somewhat from early November (71%) to late November (76%).

Without leaners, the picture looks just as grim for ObamaCare advocates.  Only 35% of adults — not registered or likely voters — support the bill, while 42% oppose it.  Not only is the latter the highest level of opposition so far this year, it’s higher than support ever reached this year, too.  Support rebounded from a low of 29% in October, but only claimed about half of those who made up their minds in that period.

Gallup doesn’t present any historical data on Obama’s approval rating on health care, but he’s upside-down by 13 points on this survey, 40/53.  Democrats approve of his work on the issue at 74%, but as Gallup notes, they approve overall at 80%.  Independents have Obama 25 points under water on health care, 33/58, a dangerous level of disapproval heading into the Senate debate.

Are our elected representatives listening?  They’ll listen a year from now, but if these numbers are any indication, that will be far too late.

“Would ObamaCare Kill Medical Innovation?”  That’s the question posed by health care expert Michael Cannon.  His answer is yes:  “President Obama’s health plan would likely reduce such innovation, to the detriment of the entire world.”

Other experts agree.  Harvard Medical School’s Dean said the health care bills backed by Obama would reduce “our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies” that save lives.

England’s government-run NHS health care system results in “10,000 unnecessary cancer deaths” every year.  “Hundreds of patients died needlessly at an NHS hospital due to appalling care.”

That is just the tip of the iceberg in what ObamaCare will cost our society.  It would also raise taxes, deficits, and medical costs.

As I noted earlier, the Senate recently voted 60-to-39, along party lines, to press towards passage of a massive health care bill, blocking a Republican filibuster.

Afterward, however, the bill drew criticism even from moderate Democrats who usually support the Obama administration, which backs the bill.  Veteran Washington Post editorialist David Broder called the bill a “budget buster in the making,” saying it will violate President Obama’s “pledge that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade.”  He pleaded with the Obama administration and Congress not to “pass along unfunded programs to our children and grandchildren.”

In the Examiner, a Democrat who backed Obama in 2008 criticized the administration for backing a health care bill that violates Obama’s campaign promises by raising taxes on the middle class, citing the bill’s many tax increases, such as its tax on uninsured people and taxes on cosmetic surgery and other medical procedures.

Earlier, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen (D) criticized ObamaCare for driving up state spending and budget deficits, calling it “the mother of all unfunded mandates.”

Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson today called ObamaCare a generational rip-off.  Earlier, he noted that the health care bill is “hypocritical” and “dishonest” and aggravates the worst features of the “status quo.”

In the Senate, all Democrats voted for the bill.  But many received payoffs for doing so.  And there really are no “moderate” Democrats left in the Senate: most of its so-called “moderate” Democrats are not moderate or conservative on anything except on a handful of social issues needed to survive in a “red state,” like gun control.  No Senate Democrat today deviates from the liberal party line as often as the moderate Democrats who once served in the Senate, like Senators Alan Dixon of Illinois and J. James Exon of Nebraska.

As I noted on Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) lined up the 60 votes through payoffs to wavering Senators and powerful unions (some mismanaged unions will receive a taxpayer bailout of their health plans, to the tune of up to $10 billion).

The Dean of Harvard Medical School recently gave Obama’s health care plan a “failing grade,” saying it will harm America’s health and finances, and hamper medical innovations needed to save patients’ lives.  Dean Jeffrey S. Flier wrote in The Wall Street Journal that along “with dozens of health-care leaders and economists,” he had concluded that the bill “will markedly accelerate national health-care spending,” would harm care “by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies,” and would reduce “our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies” that save lives.

Other experts agree.  The health care “reform” bill backed by President Obama “would reduce senior care,” increase “medical costs,”  and “could jeopardize access to care for millions,” report health care experts at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  The House recently passed a similar bill by the razor-thin margin of 220 to 215.

The bill will raise taxes on the middle class.  It will increase taxes on individuals, employers, and hospitals, impose new taxes on medical devices and cosmetic surgery, and levy a 40% tax on health-care plans above $8,500.  It will increase the deficit, drive up state government spending, and cost taxpayers at least twice as much as predicted.  It is one of the most expensive bills of all time.

It contains special-interest pork, such as payoffs for trial lawyers, and racial preferences that drew criticism from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The bill restricts national competition in health insurance, which is permitted in countries with cheaper health care.

ObamaCare spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

“ObamaCare is all about rationing,” and tax increases, says one of Obama’s own economic advisers, Martin Feldstein.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health care. Obama often contradicts himself. In the very same speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health care.

CNN noted that Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” contradicting Obama’s claim that the bill will leave you free to choose your doctor and keep your health care plan without government interference.

The bill does nothing to curb massive waste and fraud in existing government health care systems like Medicare and Medicaid, even though it proposes to make massive cuts in Medicare (cuts so painful that most of them will never happen: year after year, Congress waives “the annual cut in fees paid by Medicare to physicians” mandated by an earlier law.  The cuts were added to the bill only to reduce its apparent cost.  As economist and former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin notes in The Wall Street Journal, the promised cuts to pay for ObamaCare will not happen: “Senate Democrats chose to ignore this reality and rely on the promise of a cut to make their bill add up. Taking note of this fact … destroys any pretense of budget balance.”)

Backers of ObamaCare have refused to cut medical costs through malpractice reform, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying that such reforms would save “only” $54 billion.  The Pacific Research Institute estimates that just one type of cost that could be reduced through malpractice-lawsuit reform — defensive medicine — costs around $200 billion annually (which is almost as much as France spends annually on health care for all of its citizens; like most countries, France has no punitive damages, and fewer lawsuits against doctors).

One reform opposed by the Democrats — setting up specialized health tribunals to hear malpractice cases — would be particularly helpful. Replacing uninformed juries with specialized health courts would provide more consistent rulings from case to case, eliminate meritless cases, reduce defensive medicine, and more speedily compensate injured people who truly are victimized by doctors’ carelessness. Such tribunals already exist in countries like “Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand.”

Martin Feldstein, one of Obama’s own advisors, has said that Obama’s health care plan would explode the federal budget deficit and lead to “crippling deficits,” as well as “higher taxes, debt payments, and interest rates” that would cut America’s standard of living. Feldstein also noted that Obama’s health care plan would harm people with insurance, and predicted that it would lead to massive tax increases. Other analysts have predicted that it will drive up medical costs and inflation.

Obama has relied on $2 trillion in imaginary savings to pay for healthcare “reform.”

Democrats can’t be enjoying this:

Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin recently was asked if a national health care bill would pass the Senate by the end of the year. “It must,” Durbin responded. “We have to finish it.”

Many other top Democrats share Durbin’s determination to meet this deadline. But it’s almost certainly not going to happen, for three reasons: the calendar, the Senate’s other business, and, most importantly, growing public opposition to the health bill itself.

Start with the calendar. No matter what Durbin says, there’s not enough time to get a bill of the scope and complexity of the 2,074-page Senate proposal — which was only unveiled 10 days ago — done by New Year’s.

The Senate’s first full day of business after the Thanksgiving break is Tuesday, Dec. 1. After that shortened week, there are two more workweeks, beginning Dec. 7 and 14, before the beginning of the traditional Christmas-New Year’s break. That’s a total of 14 working days (assuming the lawmakers work through the weekends) to debate, amend, and vote on the bill.

But even if the Senate were to work through part of the holidays and add a few days to the legislative calendar, there won’t be enough time to deal with the amendments senators will propose. It won’t just be Republicans trying to slow things down; there will be Democrats making changes, too. Say Senator X believes some provision in the bill will have a negative effect on his state. He’ll need to be able to tell voters that he looked out for them. “They’re all going to need their CYA amendments,” says one well-connected Republican Senate aide. For anyone unfamiliar with iron acronyms of Capitol Hill, CYA means Cover Your Ass.

Then there will be the Republican amendments. GOP lawmakers will introduce amendments to challenge some of the bill’s fundamentals: the giant cuts in Medicare spending, the array of new and higher taxes, the coerciveness of the bill’s mandates, and the intimidating new powers given to health care bureaucrats. “We probably won’t have one comprehensive alternative,” Republican Sen. Charles Grassley told reporters. “We’ll probably have a lot of different subsection amendments.”

That takes time. But even if it were possible to get it done by year’s end, health care is still just one of many things the Senate has to do. There are several appropriations bills that remain undone. A debt-ceiling agreement that has to be reached. The extension of some parts of the Patriot Act. The extension of the highway bill. (Never mind the distraction of the Afghanistan troop debate.) It all has to get done — or at least kicked down the road — by the end of the year. Even kicking them down the road will take time.

“It would take probably from now ’til Christmas to do all of those issues, to deal with all of those measures that we should be dealing with,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week. Instead, McConnell said, the Senate is racing to meet a “manufactured deadline.”

But the biggest problem for Democrats, by far, is that public support for the bill is slowly and steadily falling. According to Pollster.com, the average of all the polls done on health care shows 48.7 percent of Americans opposed to the bill, and 39.5 percent in favor. The gap between disapproval and approval has never been bigger.

The reason the Democratic leadership and the White House are rushing to pass the bill is that they know it is killing them and believe doing it quickly will kill fewer of them than doing it slowly. If they pass it by year’s end, perhaps voters will move on to other concerns by the November 2010 midterm elections.

November 29, 2009 J Paul from DuPage Co. writes:

The government has already tipped its hand with the recent announcement that it really isn’t necessary for women under 40 to have mammograms.

The current administration and its Democrat majority in Congress have repeated over and over that there should be no fear of rationing under the proposed government run national health care plan. This would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. Of course there will be rationing, but those covered under the federal employees health care plans (the president, all those in both houses of Congress and all other federal employees) will not be affected, so they don’t worry about this.

Those in Congress who promote national health care point to the success of Medicare. Yet every year after Medicare was first made effective, the government has increased the deductibles and limited the amounts it pays to doctors and hospitals. Leaving greater and greater amounts to be paid by those on Medicare. It is this annual reduction in Medicare benefits by the government that forces those on Medicare to purchase Medicare Supplement plans, which have to pick up those amounts Medicare no longer pays. This in turn forces the insurance companies that sell Medicare Supplement coverage (including AARP) to increase the rates of Medicare Supplement coverage annually.

With this history of annual Medicare deductible increases (benefit reductions) what makes anyone think that the government won’t do exactly the same thing once it controls all of health care.

Every year, more and more doctors refuse to take on Medicare patients because Medicare pays doctors only about 70% of their usual and customary charges that doctors charge. Insurance companies pay doctors 100% of usual and customary physician’s charges. When the government takes over all of health care what is to stop them from using the same reduced payment schedule for doctor’s charges that they now use for Medicare?

Every year for the past fifty years, both state and federal governments have passed health insurance laws and regulations that require the benefits of group health plans be increased and that eligibility for coverage under those plans be expanded and broadened. Of course those covered under these plans may believe that such expansions of coverage and eligibility are fair and necessary. However, many do not believe that there should be any increase in cost associated with these increased benefits and eligibility.

When coverage and/or the eligibility for that coverage is increased and broadened, of necessity, more claims will be paid out either by those insurance plans, whether they be fully insured or self insured by employers or unions. The more the claims paid, the higher the premiums must be to support those additional claims.

The politicians so willing to curry public favor by demanding health insurance plans continually increase benefits and eligibility are typically the same ones who are so quick to point the finger of guilt at “the greedy insurance companies” for increasing premiums to cover theses expansions.

It will be interesting to see who these politicians will blame when they have put all of the private health insurance companies out of business. When there are no more hea;lth insurance companies left to sell Medicare supplement coverage, where will those on Medicare turn to fill in all the gaps in coverage and those deductibles that Medicare keeps raising?

It will also be interesting to see how much the government will expand coverage and the amounts payable to doctors when it is the only one providing such coverage.

It will also be interesting to see where all the phony concern and crocodile tears on the part of Obama, Harry Reid and Pelosi will be when you and your loved ones, who may contract breast cancer, that they will need to wait 6 to 9 months for their turn to get a CT scan, or a PET scan, or radiation therapy, or that since they are so old, they really ought to consider taking pain pills in stead of treatment.

Yes, this situation does occur presently among those who, due to choice or chance, do not have health coverage. But, do we scrap a system that currently serves the needs of 90% of our population because the needs of 10% aren’t being met? Illegal aliens need to go back to their own countries and petition their own governments for health care. Those who choose not to buy insurance should be left to their own fate. For those who are legal U.S. citizens who are truly indigent, there is Medicaid. For the working poor, who cannot afford health insurance, a government health insurance program could be established exclusively for them, in a manner that Medicaid was established for the truly indigent.

The present study examines the relationship between racial prejudice and reactions to President Barack Obama and his policies. Before the 2008 election, participants’ levels of implicit and explicit anti-Black prejudice were measured. Over the following days and months, voting behavior, attitudes toward Obama, and attitudes toward Obama’s health care reform plan were assessed. Controlling for explicit prejudice, implicit prejudice predicted a reluctance to vote for Obama, opposition to his health care reform plan, and endorsement of specific concerns about the plan. In an experiment, the association between implicit prejudice and opposition to health care reform replicated when the plan was attributed to Obama, but not to Bill Clinton—suggesting that individuals high in anti-Black prejudice tended to oppose Obama at least in part because they dislike him as a Black person. In sum, our data support the notion that racial prejudice is one factor driving opposition to Obama and his policies.

That is from a forthcoming paper by Eric D. Knowles, Brian S. Lowery, and Rebecca L. Schaumberg. A gated version is here. I cannot find an ungated version. This study is not yet published but is already getting some attention and, from Mike Munger, some criticism.

The study drew on a non-random group of subjects — e.g., it is 68% female — and gathered data on four occasions. In late October 2008, subjects’ level of “explicit racism” was measured via a series of questions. A measure of “implicit racism” was also constructed, using a version of the Implicit Association Test. In early November 2008, subjects answered a series of questions about Obama. In mid-November, they indicated their vote choice.

Then, almost a year later (Oct 1-3, 2009), a random half-sample of subjects was asked several questions about health care reform. The second half-sample was given a description of a health care reform proposal; half of these were told it was Obama’s and half were told it was Bill Clinton’s. Then they indicate their attitudes toward the proposal.

The measure of implicit racism predicted attitudes toward health care, primarily via its apparent effect on attitudes toward Obama himself. The effect of implicit racism was notable even when controlling for explicit racism — a finding that is of interest to some psychologists, although I will not dwell on it here. Moreover, in the Obama-Clinton experiment, the effect of racism predicted support for Obama’s plan but not Clinton’s plan (even though, again, the plans were described identically).

What should we make of this? The study’s major limitations are two. First, the sample is non-random and thus it is difficult to know how much can be generalized from it.

Second, support for health care is modeled only as a function of explicit and implicit racism, with attitudes toward Obama as a mediating variable. There are no additional control variables — party identification, ideology, and so on. All of these other factors could be associated with racism, attitudes toward Obama, and support for health care reform. The article’s estimated effects of racism, both direct and indirect, are suggestive but , it seems to me, far from conclusive. There is a long-standing debate in political science about the relative importance of racial prejudice and race-neutral political values, one which this article does not engage.

Even the experiment isn’t conclusive in this regard. An Obama frame makes racism a more significant predictor, but this could be spurious. Perhaps the Obama frame would prime other factors as well — e.g., partisanship, since Obama could be a more polarizing president than Clinton; or ideology, if people perceive Obama as more liberal than Clinton. I would prefer to see a model that includes more factors besides racism and then an analysis of whether the Obama and Clinton frames affect any or all of these factors.

A final point, which has to do with interpretation rather than research design: an individual-level effect of racism on attitudes does not necessarily translate into a large aggregate effect. If one estimated a model of health care attitudes that included multiple factors, my guess is that simulating the complete end of racism would not make health care reform much more popular. Any people who are prejudiced will also have other reasons for opposing reform. In this earlier post, I simulated the “end of racism” by making whites with a negative opinion of blacks relative to whites evaluate whites and blacks equivalently. This simulation added a single, solitary point to Obama’s share of the vote. The same could be true here.

I do believe that racial prejudice is likely to affect attitudes toward Obama and his policy proposals and am, like the authors, deeply skeptical of the Democracy Corps finding that racial prejudice was “almost beside the point” when it came to explaining opposition to Obama. However, this article provides only tentative evidence against that conjecture.

Tagged: house speaker nancy pelosispeaker nancy pelosifederal health insurancehealth care debaterefundable tax creditjoint session of congresshealth care coverageimmigration subcommitteehealth insurance coveragenancy pelosibill mandatesillegal immigrantscalifornia democratimmigration studiesillegal immigranthouse judiciary committeehealth billsemployer coveragefalse identitiessteve king