Posts Tagged ‘health care’

Andy Hefty

Congressman Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, just doesn’t know when to keep his inflammatory, inane pie-hole closed. Continuing his mindless rhetoric from last week, at a town hall meeting Monday he “promised” something that could not come true.

Git yer health care, right here!

This is typical of Democrats who wish to stifle debate with promises they can’t keep – just to silence critics. It’s as hollow as the old, “I’ll still respect you in the morning” line. And just as true. Apparently, he is experiencing hypothermia as a result of a political-medical term I call lackaspotlight.

Somewhere in every state and county fair lies a person of unknown origin who is neither a clown nor a crook. He shouts all day and night, at all who would listen.

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David Karki

Once again, a knife has been stuck in the back of freedom. Once again, liberty has been betrayed. Once again, an  idiot Senator from Maine has conspired with the opposition to pull the last bolt free on the floodgate door holding back a Marxist tsunami. When will enough be enough?

No place to hide.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R – shyeah, right – Maine) has once again proven she is a Democrat by her flipping of sides on the most crucial bills. Thanks to her, we got a trillion dollars of Porkulus. And thanks to her, we’re now substantially closer to getting communist Obamacare.

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Dan Calabrese

The vote is in. The Baucus health care bill has survived the Senate Finance Committee vote, 14-9, with support from Maine Republican Olympia Snowe and all 13 committee Democrats.

I guess this is what you have to do to remain politically viable as a Republican in Maine.

History? Wrong number.

So far, the only comment is, “When history calls, history calls,” whatever that means.

Snowe’s vote should give the bill enough support to pass the Senate.

Bob Maistros

So in case you missed it amid all the hoopla about our latest Nobel Laureate, the Congressional Budget Office last week announced its “score” for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s health care legislation.  The price tag: “just” $829 billion, as opposed to President Obama’s target of $900 billion and a House panel’s trim $1 trillion-plus version.

Don't worry, it's fully paid for!

Furthermore, according to our watchdogs at the CBO, the Baucus bill would be “fully paid for” … by hiking taxes on pharmaceutical companies, small businesses and so-called “high-premium” health care plans, shifting Medicaid costs to states, and, let’s not forget, lowering the boom on people and businesses who don’t want to pay through the nose for the insurance add-ons mandated by Washington.

All this was hailed by the Montana solon as “good news.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Watson

When George Stephanopoulos recently challenged President Obama on his campaign’s no-tax pledge, he was dismissed: “George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.”

Is is?

Obama did not bother to provide his definition of tax increases. One wonders if the president recently read the following passage from Lewis Carroll:

“ ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’”

Didn’t another president have trouble with the definition of a simple word? “It depends what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

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Dan Sherrier

Congress is dealing with literacy issues. Not students’ literacy, though. Their own.

Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee have proposed posting the full language of health care legislation – with a cost estimate – online for 72 hours before the committee votes. This would, in theory, allow senators some time to actually read the bill for a nice change of pace.

Sen. Carper: "It's just hard to decipher what it really means."

Politico reports that the committee rejected the proposal 11-12. It was mostly a party-line vote, but one Democrat, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, had the sense to abandon her reading-impaired colleagues. Even Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), she of the I-voted-for-the-stimulus fame, stuck with the Republicans this time. (And no, that doesn’t make up for her stimulus vote. If she’s seeking redemption, her quest will not be a brief one.)

Were the Republicans engaging in political grandstanding here, or actually trying to do the right thing? Or does that question even matter?

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Candace Talmadge

Never let pesky facts get in the way of a profitable myth. The myth in question: Runaway medical malpractice lawsuits are causing outrageous hikes in U.S. health care costs.

Here’s the reality: Medical malpractice total costs were 0.6 percent of all U.S. medical costs in 2008. Actual medical malpractice lawsuit payouts have fallen to less than 0.2 percent of this country’s total health care spending.

Not what you think.

And the actual number of medical malpractice payouts in 2008 was the lowest since the federal government began keeping national records.

These numbers come from a report published in July by Public Citizen, which analyzes medical malpractice payout data from the National Practitioner Databank (NPDB).

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Dan Calabrese

NBC’s Ken Strickland has the details.

Democrats Baucus, Lincoln and Conrad (all from red states, not surprisingly) joined all the Republicans on the committee to send it to defeat by a 13-10 vote.

Strickland says no more committee votes on the public option are expected.

What now?

Herman Cain

There’s an old saying that there are three kinds of people in the world. There are people who make things happen, people who watch things happen and people who ask what happened. The latter group will wake up in the not-too-distant future and ask what happen to the United States of America if they just sit there.

Uh, dude . . .

The big government tax-and-spend liberals are happy with this irrefutable government power grab of our liberties, while too many conservatives at heart are just sitting on the couch. And since the mainstream media is not connecting the dots about what is really happening, here are some recent examples:

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Bob Franken

For the moment, let’s step past the battle over a government option as competition for the private insurance companies. The real problem is that there would still be that private option.

Unless, we eliminate the revenue-obsessed insurance companies and adopt a single-payer system in this country, which most are loathe to do, it would be difficult for profit and non-profit to co-exist.

We're upset and we're not gonna take it anymore!

Under such an arrangement, insurance companies would find ways to offer their policies only to the most healthy, those least likely to need a payout from their medical coverage. Their lawyers would find ways to circumvent any restrictions on covering those with pre-existing conditions and canceling those customers once they get sick.

They would use the public plans as their dumping grounds, to put in bluntly, by tossing out anybody who would threaten the next quarterly report.

It’s fascinating how this might be the mirror image of what happens in countries that rely on government health insurance the reflection would be backwards.

While the people of Canada, for instance, like to laud it over the United States for its government-run systems, many citizens sometimes get frustrated with the delays in optional and semi-optional care. Read the rest of this entry »