Why not PAY FOR HEALTH CARE instead of paying for HEALTH CARE INSURANCE PREMIUMS?

Lie Two: No new taxes on employer benefits.
Obama took his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, to the mat for suggesting that it might be better to remove the existing health care tax break that individuals get on their employer-sponsored coverage, but return the vast bulk--if not all--of the resulting revenues in the form of health care tax credits. This would theoretically have made coverage both more affordable and portable for everyone. Obama, however, would have none of it, portraying this idea simply as the removal of a tax break. "For the first time in history, he wants to tax your health benefits," he thundered. "Apparently, Sen. McCain doesn't think it's enough that your health premiums have doubled. He thinks you should have to pay taxes on them too."
Yet now Obama is signaling his willingness to go along with a far worse scheme to tax employer-sponsored benefits to fund the $1.6 trillion or so it will cost to provide universal coverage. Contrary to Obama's allegations, McCain's plan did not ultimately entail a net tax increase because he intended to return to individuals whatever money was raised by scrapping the tax deduction. Not so with Obama. He apparently told Sen. Baucus that he would consider the senator's plan for rolling back the tax exclusion that expensive, Cadillac-style employer-sponsored plans enjoy, in order to pay for universal coverage. But, unlike McCain, he has said nothing about putting offsetting deductions or credits in the hands of individuals.
In other words, Obama might well end up doing what McCain never set out to do: Impose a net tax increase on health benefits for the first time in history.

Lie Three: Government can control rising health care costs better than the private sector.
Ignoring the reality that Medicare--the government-funded program for the elderly--has put the country on the path to fiscal ruin, Obama wants to model a government insurance plan--the so-called "public option"--after Medicare in order to control the country's rising health care costs. Why? Because, he repeatedly claims, Medicare has far lower administrative costs and overhead than private plans--to wit, 3% for Medicare compared to 10% to 20% for private plans. Hence, he says, subjecting private plans to competition against an entity delivering such superior efficiency will release health care dollars for universal coverage.
But lower administrative costs do not necessarily mean greater efficiency. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office analysis last year chastised Medicare's lax attitude on this front. "The traditional fee-for-service Medicare program does relatively little to manage benefits, which tends to reduce its administrative costs but may raise its overall spending relative to a more tightly managed approach," it noted on page 93.
In short, extending the Medicare model will further ruin--not improve--even the functioning aspects of private plans.

Lie Four: A public plan won't be a Trojan horse for a single-payer monopoly.
Obama has repeatedly claimed that forcing private plans to compete with a public plan will simply "keep them honest" and give patients more options--not lead to a full-blown, Canadian-style, single-payer monopoly. As I argued in my previous column, this is wishful thinking given that government programs such as Medicare have a history of controlling costs by underpaying providers, who make up the losses by charging private plans more. Any public plan modeled after Medicare will greatly increase this forced subsidy, eventually driving private plans out of business, even if that weren't Obama's intention.
But, as it turns out, it very much is his intention. Before he decided to run for office--and even during the initial days of his campaign--Obama repeatedly said that he was in favor of a single-payer system. What's more, University of California, Berkeley Professor Jacob Hacker, who is a key influence on the Obama administration, is on tape explicitly boasting that a public plan is a means for creating a single-payer system. "It's not a Trojan horse," he quips, "it's just right there."
But even if Obama wanted to, it is simply impossible to design a public plan that could compete with private insurers on a level playing field and without "feeding off the public trough" as Obama claims.
At the very least, such a plan would always carry an implicit government guarantee that, should it go bust, no one in the plan would lose coverage. This guarantee would artificially lower the plan's capital reserve requirements, giving it an unfair edge over private plans. What's more, it is simply not plausible to expect that the plan wouldn't receive any start-up subsidies or use the government's muscle to negotiate lower rates with providers. If it eschewed all these things, there would be no reason for it to exist--because it would be just like any other private plan.

Lie Five: Patients don't have to fear rationing.
Obama has been insisting, including during his ABC Town Hall event last week, that the rationing patients would face under a government-run system wouldn't be any more draconian than what they currently confront under private plans. This is complete nonsense.
The left has been trying to address fears of rationing by trotting out an old and tired trope, namely, that rationing is an inescapable fact of life because every system rations whether by price or fiat. But there is a big difference between the two. If I can't afford caviar and champagne every night, any rationing involved is metaphoric, not real. Genuine rationing occurs when someone else controls access--how much of a particular good I can consume.
By that token, Obama's stimulus bill has set in motion rationing on a scale unimaginable in the land of the free. Indeed, the bill commits over $1 billion to conduct comparative effectiveness research that will evaluate the relative merits of various treatments. That in itself wouldn't be so objectionable--if it weren't for the fact that a board will then "direct financing" toward approved, standardized treatments. In short, doctors will find it much harder to prescribe newer or non-standard treatments not yet deemed effective by health care bureaucrats. This is exactly along the lines of the British system, where breast cancer patients were denied Herceptin, a new miracle drug, until enraged women fought back. Even the much-vilified managed care plans would appear to be a paragon of generosity in comparison with this.
Obama has repeatedly asked for honesty in the health care debate. It is high time he started showing some.

Obama's health care proposal is, in effect, the repeal of the Medicare program as we know it.  The elderly will go from being the group with the most access to free medical care to the one with the least access.    Indeed, the principal impact of the Obama health care program will be to reduce sharply the medical services the elderly can use.  No longer will their every medical need be met, their every medication prescribed, their every need to improve their quality of life answered.

It is so ironic that the elderly - who were so vigilant when Bush proposed to change Social Security - are so relaxed about the Obama health care proposals.  Bush's Social Security plan, which did not cut their benefits at all, aroused the strongest opposition among the elderly.  But Obama's plan, which will totally gut Medicare and replace it with government-managed care and rationing, has elicited little more than a yawn from most senior citizens.


 It's time for the elderly to wake up before it is too late!

In our new book, Catastrophe, we explain - in detail and in depth - the consequences the elderly of Canada are feeling from just this kind of program.  Limited colonoscopies have led to a 25% higher rate of colon cancer and a ban on the use of the two best chemotherapies are part of the reason why 42% of Canadians with colon cancer die while 31% of Americans, who have access to these two medications, survive the disease.

Overall, the death rate from cancer in Canada is 16% higher than in the United States and the heart disease mortality rate is 6% above ours'.
Under Obama's program, there will be a government health insurance company that gets huge subsidies of tax money.  It will compete with private insurance plans.  But the subsidies will let it undercut the private plans and drive them out of business, leaving only the government plan - a single payer - in effect.

Today, 800,000 doctors struggle to treat adequately the 250 million Americans who have insurance.  Obama will add 50 million more to their caseload with no expansion in the number of doctors or nurses.  Indeed, his plan will likely reduce their number by lowering reimbursement rates and imposing bureaucrats above them who will force medical decisions down their throats.   Fewer doctors will have to treat more patients.  The inevitable result will be rationing.

And it is the elderly who rationing will most effect.  Who should get a knee replacement a 40 year old or a 70 year old?  Who should get a new hip, a young person or an old person?  Who should have priority in the operating room a seventy year old diabetic who needs bypass surgery or a younger person?  Obviously, it is the elderly who will get short shrift under his proposal.

But the interest groups that usually speak up for the elderly, particularly AARP, are in Obama's pocket, hoping to profit from his program by becoming one of its vendors.  Just as they backed Bush's prescription drug plan because they anticipating profiting from it, so they are now helping Obama gut the medical care of their constituents.

It is high time that the elderly of America realized what the stakes are in this vital fight to preserve Medicare as we know it and keep medical care open, accessible, and free to those over 65.  It is truly a battle for their very lives.

We Can Win on Healthcare
 


 

Few if any political proposals in our lifetime will impact our lives in such a personal way as the government takeover of health care sought by the President and Democrats in Washington. If health care reform is taken down the wrong path, it will end in nothing short of disaster.

This is a make-or-break moment for Americans and the history of our great nation. And it is a battle we can win.

Two paths for health care reform are possible. One preserves and bolsters the ability for patients to control their own health care and make medical decisions independently with their doctors. The other leads to a government takeover of the health care industry that will permanently place Washington between you and the care you seek.



As a physician, I have always fought for patient-centered health care reform that promotes six principles of care: accessibility, affordability, quality, choices, innovation, and responsiveness. Surely none of these principles are improved by greater involvement of the federal government. Unfortunately, Democrats in charge have largely (and predictably) ignored the ideas of Republicans and are marching forward with a government-centered health care plan.

One of the most basic precepts of medicine is that you cannot effectively treat the problem until you get the diagnosis right. Yet Democrats have terribly misdiagnosed the disease in American health care. As with nearly everything, they have decided the problem in our health care delivery system is a shortage of government intervention.

Having personally navigated the federal health care system of our first “public option” -- Medicare -- I can tell you firsthand that the government only distances patients from access to the best care. Restrictive coverage rules, endless bureaucratic delays, and inadequate financing structures leave patients without the choices we should expect in a 21st century health care system.

The real problem with American health care is that too many patients have a third-party in between them and their care, be it a Washington bureaucrat, an employer, or an unresponsive insurer. Just as the pressure of competition can empower a consumer, our goal must be to put patients in charge of their health care so that insurers are accountable to them, not the government or another third-party.

The President’s government-run plan will not fix this problem; rather, it will cement it by permanently making Washington the all-powerful middle man in the delivery of medical services. The Democrats’ taxpayer-subsidized plan will push private insurance providers out of business and catch millions of Americans in its net. According to a new estimate, 114 million Americans who currently carry personal, private health insurance will be forced onto the government plan.

As the experience of many nations around the world has proven, a government-run system will ration care. Medical decisions that should be made by patients in consultation with their doctors will instead be made by unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington. People who have never treated a patient in their lives will decide the procedures to which you should have access. Vital treatments will be delayed or even denied.

And make no mistake: there will be no turning back, no reversing the government intrusion that Democrats desire. Medicare began as a public option and now holds 97% of the market share. This new government-run health care plan will permanently swallow up the personal, private care that so many Americans enjoy. The issue and threat to American medicine is deadly serious.

Yet, there remains hope. We can win this debate. Just like fifteen years ago, Americans reject what the President and his allies are promoting. A recent Washington Post poll showed that only 37% of Americans, informed of its effects, support the President’s government-run plan.

Democrats hold sizable majorities in both chambers of Congress, but what makes this nation so great remains true: ultimately the people’s voice carries the most weight.

We can succeed. We can stand up for patient-centered health care and send the President’s fatally flawed idea to the ash heap of history. It will not happen, however, without your help.

It is my hope that you will recognize the seriousness of the threat to the care you, your family, and generations of Americans will receive. And what’s more, I hope that you will ask, “What can I do?” The conservative movement is only as powerful as its ability to affect the direction of our nation for the better. We have proven ourselves time and again, but this must be our moment.

As Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, I invite you to engage in this historic debate. All representatives and senators must know that America does not seek a government takeover of health care. In our communities and in Washington, conservatives must speak out. Speak to your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, even strangers. Online and in person. Tell them that we support a health care system which puts patients, not bureaucrats, in charge. Write, call, email, blog. Fight. Everyday.

We can win this. In fact, we must win this fight. And when we do, I hope you will feel the accomplishment of having fought right along side us for the advancement of American health care and freedom.

I believe America owes its citizens two things. One Health care and two education. We pay alot of taxes and on everything from A to Z but not on health care and a university education? Someone getting rich aren't they? There is still more bankruptcies in this country from health care than anything else bar none. I really don't want to hear from the people that haven't had medical problems because they think there just ok. Its capitalizism. BS Its corporate robbery and this country needs the change to protect its people.  Thanks

SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS:

  The actress Natasha Richardson died after falling skiing in Canada ..  It took eight hours to drive her to a hospital. 



If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today. 



In the United States , we have medical evacuation helicopters that would have gotten her to the hospital in 30 minutes.  

 
In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because
it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed.  



Obama wants to have a healthcare system just like Canada 's and England 's.



I got this today and am sending it on.  If Obama's plans in other areas don't scare you, this should!



  Please do not let Obama sign senior death warrants!!



Everybody that is on this mailing list  knows somebody that is a senior.
 
Most of you know by now that the Senate version (at least) of the "stimulus" Bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens.


The author of this part of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg with the following statement:



Bloomberg:  Daschle says "health-care reform will not be pain free.  Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them."

  If this does not sufficiently raise your ire,
just remember that our esteemed Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes.


Please use the power of the Internet to get this message out.  Talk it up at the grassroots level. 
 
We have an election coming up in one year and nine months, and we have the ability to address and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and it allies have begun and in the interim, we can make their lives miserable  Lets do this!   
   If you disagree, do nothing.
We are in a critical time regarding which direction the health care debate is going to go. Make your voice heard. And be armed with the facts. Watch "Sicko" again!
  "Sicko" airs on The Movie Channel tonight at 8:00 PM. It's also scheduled to air on The Movie Channel on July 27th at 4:05 PM and on TMC Xtra on August 2nd at 10:45 PM and August 5th at 2:15 AM and 7:30 AM. Click here for showtimes .
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