Saturday, August 08, 2009

Have you turned in a neighbor today?

Don't forget to do your part. Have you turned in a neighbor today? I am up to 27 emails to the White House reporting "fishy" Obamacare stories and overheard comments. If we all do our part, we could crash the White House computer.

Email to this address: http://www.blogger.com/flag@whitehouse.gov

Here is a sample:

Dear White House,

I’d like to report that a neighbor at 1040 Pine Crest has applied a bumper sticker that says “OBAMACARE,” and has a picture on the sticker of an elderly couple with a red circle around them and a red slash through the circle. That looks fishy, in that it seems to infer that older couples are expendable.

What do you think?
Rod

Dear readers of A Disgruntled Republican, If I don't blog for a while it is because I have been sent to a reeducation camp. I think someone turned me in.

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Stop Scaring Grandma

If you look at my post on the topic of health care, you will clearly see that I am opposed to the current proposals for health care reform. I think what is before us is a step in the wrong direction and will make health care worse in America, not better. I favor reform in the direction of a more market oriented health care system, not more government control.

While I am clearly in the camp of those who want to defeat Obamacare, I nevertheless think that the truth matters and we should not win at any cost. It is time to can the talk of euthanasia and soylent green.

The current health care proposals before us will not ship grandma off to die. The current version of "America's Affordable Health Choices Act," the House version of Obamacare, is a provision that would authorize Medicare to pay for a consultation between a patient and the patient's doctor or nurse, to discuss how much or little medical care is desired in the event of incapacitation. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is not mandatory; it simply authorizes Medicare to pay for the consultation between the patient and the patient’s health care provider. A bureaucrat will not be coming in telling old people to hurry up and die.

Another bill in Congress called the Advance Planning and Compassionate Care Act says that patients will be informed about the benefits of hospice and palliative care. What is wrong with that? From these two bills has come the talk of euthanasia.

Another source of concern fueling the euthanasia scare is that health care reform will lead to rationing of services and that more value will be given to saving a young life than someone near the end of their life. The administration strongly denies any rationing will follow health care reform. Despite the administrations denial, there will have to be rationing. There is already rationing.

In a market economy wants or restrained by price; in a command economy wants are restrained by public policy funding decisions or administrative fiat. Very few people ever get all they want at the price they want to pay. In our current mixed health care system, insurance companies routinely “ration” care. Some procedures are not covered and there are limits on how much your insurance will pay for other procedures or illnesses. We all accept that.

If you are an eligible veteran and there is not a veteran’s hospital in your community is that not a form of rationing? If you call not spending the full amount that everyone thinks we should spend on a service “rationing,” we ration all public services from roadway construction to education to police protection.

Face it. The health care trajectory we are on is simply not sustainable. Medicare is going broke and a quarter of all spending by Medicare, more than $100 billion, takes place during a patent's final year of life. I am on the leading edge of the baby boomer generation and there are a lot of people behind me. In a few years, old people will be the largest demographic. Medicare is not really a self-sustaining insurance policy; it has become an entitlement. New medical advances make it possible to extend the dieing process for a longer and longer period of time. The truth is it will simply not be possible to continue to increase the spending on medicare necessary to meet the demand for health care consumption. That is rationing.

In a desire to defeat Obamacare, we should not scare the elderly with talk of euthanasia. We should not do it because it is wrong, but also because it will poison the admoshpere so that real reform of our sick health care system will not be possible.

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Friday, August 07, 2009

The real reason conservatives oppose Obamacare.

It is interesting to see how the mind of a liberal works; that is, when it works at all. Most of the time liberals don't have to work their mind and actually think; they just feel. They are so convinced of their moral superiority they don't have to think; they just know. When liberals do think however, they think they have us all figured out. They just know that we could not have a valid point of view. After all, there is only one valid point of view and that is the point of view of the set of people who think just like they do. It must be due to some character flaw that makes others think differently from the way they do, they reason.

The reason we conservatives don't agree with them must be because we are not as enlightened or as moral. The reason we don't agree with them is because we are evil. I experienced this line of reasoning once when a close relative said that she explains to her children that the difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals care about people while conservatives are selfish.

On the issue of health care, liberals dare not think that we genuinely believe that a market economy is superior to a command economy. No, there must be some other reason we hold the view we do. Columnist Paul Krugman yesterday wrote an article on the "angry white mobs" showing up at town hall meetings and analyzed why these opponents of health care did not see things the correct way. This was his conclusion: "they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is." (link)

There. Now you know. The reason we do not want socialized medicine is because Obama is a Black man and we are all racist.

See how easy it is to be a liberal.

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Lamar Alexander: Why we must start over on health care.

Lamar Alexander
by Lamar Alexander, U. S. Senator (TN)

The two plans now before Congress to reform our health-care system are good-faith efforts to find the best way to go in the wrong direction. We have to start over to get it right.

Why must we start over? People at home in Tennessee, the Mayo Clinic, 1,000 local chambers of commerce and businesses, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Democratic governors all basically say, ‘These plans have too many problems.’ Add all those problems up, and this is what you’d get in Tennessee:

Both plans before Congress look at the idea of dumping—and I use that word carefully—another 300,000 low-income Tennesseans into the failed Medicaid program (known as TennCare in Tennessee), even though right now 40 percent of doctors won’t see Medicaid patients. Then they’re going to shift the cost to the states after about five years—the equivalent of a 5-10 percent new state income tax in Tennessee. Governors are rightly appalled by this, and I say every senator who votes to provide more health care by expanding the failing Medicaid program should have to go home and serve as governor for eight years to try to manage and pay for it.

And around 900,000 Tennesseans could be affected by their proposed cuts to Medicare, while up to 1.6 million Tennessee workers could lose their employer-provided health insurance. Finally, as many as two million Tennesseans are at risk of being forced into the new government program created by these proposals.

Republicans have a better idea. We want to be sure you can afford your health care, but also that you can afford your government once we’ve fixed the system. We want to be sure the insurance company representative that today stands between you and your doctor isn’t replaced by a Washington bureaucrat. We want to be sure that you’re not denied coverage because of preexisting conditions, and that you have more choices—not fewer—in the health-care marketplace.

Senate Republicans have offered several plans in support of these principles, but so far they’re not being considered. The bipartisan Wyden-Bennett plan, for example, which I’ve cosponsored, is not perfect and I wouldn’t vote for it in its current form, but it would be a good start. That plan would take the subsidies we now spend on health care and spend them in a fairer way, giving low-income Americans a chance to buy health care like the rest of us have. It wouldn’t create any new government programs—and all this without adding a single penny to the debt.

We only have one opportunity to make changes that could affect the way health care is delivered in this country for generations. It’s time to reform our health-care system, but we have to start over to get it right.





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Thursday, August 06, 2009

"Turn In" a Democrat to Obamacare's Big Brother

Turn in a Democrat

I am doing all I can to help the whitehouse track down people who are spreading disinformation about Obamacare.

Below is an email I sent to the White House today. I modeled it on a suggested email from Conservative HQ.com. If you would like to the help the White House, please feel free to copy this email or modify it as you see fit.

I think we should all get involved and really help out the White House in this effort. Please let us not assume the worse and think of this White House request as a creepy, totalitarian tactics to get citizens to turn against fellow citizens who disagree with Obamacare. Let us just assume they want to know who is spreading Disinformation so they can set the record straight. I submitted only one name per email so each name would get the attention it deserves. I also sent pictures of these public figures but I guess they don't really need the pictures, they probably know what they look like. I also turned in several bloggers, chatters in chat groups, several editorialist, my brother-in-law, and my Mom.

Please do your part; please flood the White House with emails. Click on the email address in the "To" line below or copy and past in your email server.

To: The White House ( flag@whitehouse.gov )
Re: Your Request for Help Turning In Those Who Spread Disinformation on Obamacare
From: Rod Williams

I've seen your request to help "keep track" of those who are spreading disinformation about the massive health bill President Obama and Democrats in Congress are trying to rush through into law.

You request information passed through "emails or even casual conversation."

While I find your request chilling, much like what totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union may have done to keep tabs on dissidents and other critics of those regimes, I will help you. Maybe you didn't intend for it to be intimidating and you only want to know what disinformation is being desiminated so you can set the record straight. I hope that is so. Anyway, below are the names and pictures of individuals spreading disinformation about Obamacare. If you want their addresses or other information about these infamous characters, please let me know.

Barack Obama(President, U.S.)
Nancy Pelosi(Speaker of theHouse)
Harry Reid(Senate Majority Leader)
Kathleen Sebelius(HHS Secretary)
Tim Kaine(DNC Chairman)
Joe Biden(Vice President)

P. S. With regard to emails and private conversations, your blog complains that you "can't keep track of all of them at the White House." I'll bet you're working hard on fixing that, right?

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This mining will only boost profit, harm lands

By Kathleen Williams, The Tennessean, August 6, 2009

At the urging of an unscrupulous coal industry, miners from West Virginia and Kentucky have announced plans to boycott visits to Tennessee because Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., is sponsoring national legislation to keep them from blowing the tops off our mountains.

Sen. Alexander, on behalf of our ancient mountains, our irreplaceable water supply and the millions of people who treasure both, thank you for your willingness to stand up against the bullying tactics of the manipulative and desperate coal companies.[Read More]

Comment: As Kathleen says in this article, "If a handful of miners choose not to visit our state because we value our lands more than a dollar, that's OK. Let them stay home and enjoy their scarred half-mountains, run-off flooding, former creek beds and poisoned drinking water."

Kathleen Williams is my sister and is president of the Tennessee Parks and Greenways Foundation. I am proud of the work she is doing in preserving the natural treasures of Tennessee. I am also proud or our Senator Lamar Alexander who is a Republican conservationist in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt. We must stop Mountain Top Removal.


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Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Let the White House know you’ve seen something “fishy” on the web about health care reform.

Reposted from The Morning Bell, Aug 5, 2009

The White House is losing the health care debate. Polls from National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal/NBC News, The Washington Post, Gallup, and Pew all show that the American people do not support President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

The White House wants people to believe they are losing the health care debate because “scary … videos are starting to percolate on the internet” that are spreading “disinformation” about Obama’s health care plan.The White House is even encouraging Obama supporters to help them identify people spreading this “disinformation.”

The official White House blog now asks Americans: “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

In the interest of honest debate, we would like to flag the White House about some prominent people that are directly contradicting the President about what his health care plan would do to the American people. As White House Health Reform Office communications director Linda Douglass points out in a video released by the White House yesterday, President Obama has repeatedly assured Americans that under his plan “if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them.”

The problem the White House faces, however, is that much of President Obama’s base does not want the American people to keep their current insurance plan or doctor. Activists on the left prefer a single payer system where private health insurance companies have been eliminated. So how can the White House both appease its leftist base, which wants a single payer/government run health care and mollify the vast majority of Americans who want to keep their current health insurance providers? By creating a government run “public option” designed to slowly eliminate private insurance over time.

The President has explicitly said that the public option will not eliminate private insurance. He told the American Medical Association on June 15th: “What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system...So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this - they are not telling the truth.” So the President SAYS the public option will not lead to single payer health care … but a number of prominent people are saying the exact opposite:

  • Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) at a Health Care for
    America Now rally: “And next to me was a guy from the insurance company who
    argued against the public health insurance option, saying it wouldn’t let
    private insurance compete. That a public option will put the private insurance
    industry out of business and lead to single-payer. My single-payer friends, he
    was right. The man was right.”
  • Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told Single Payer
    Action: “I think that if we get a good public option it could lead to
    single-payer and that is the best way to reach single-payer. Saying you’ll do
    nothing till you get single-payer is a sure way never to get it. … I think the
    best way we’re going to get single-payer, the only way, is to have a public
    option and demonstrate the strength of its power.”
  • Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein at the
    Democratic National Convention last year: “They have a sneaky strategy, the
    point of which is to put in place something that over time the natural
    incentives within its own market will move it to single-payer.”
  • Noble Prize winning New York Times columnist Paul
    Krugman
    : “[T]he only reason not to do [single-payer] is that politically
    it’s hard to do in one step…You’d have to convince people completely give up the
    insurance they have, whereas something that lets people keep the insurance they
    have but then offers the option of a public plan, that may evolve into
    single-payer.”

Americans deserve an honest debate about health care. President Obama, Barney Frank, and Jan Schakowsky cannot all be right. Either the President is wrong when he says his plan will not lead to government run health care, or Frank and Schakowsky are spreading disinformation when they tell their single payer advocate base that it will. So let’s help the White House out. Do email flag@whitehouse.gov and let the White House know you’ve seen something “fishy” on the web about health care reform.

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LAFFER: CURRENT HEALTH CARE PROPOSALS INCREASE COSTS, MEDICAL PRICE INFLATION, AND LEAVE 30 MILLION UNINSURED

Art LafferRenowned economist emphasizes need for patient-centered reforms that provide incentives to consumers and medical providers

AUSTIN—The health care reform plans pending in the U.S. Congress would cause more harm than good, according to a study released today by internationally renowned economist Dr. Arthur Laffer.

“Health care reform along the lines proposed by President Obama and currently pending in Congress would render U.S. citizens poorer and their federal and state governments sorely pressed for revenues,” Laffer said. “But just as important, these reforms are not a cost-effective way to expand health insurance coverage, one of the primary goals of reform.”

According to Dr. Laffer, legislation that provided an additional $1 trillion in federal health care spending would increase health care costs and medical price inflation, slow our national economy, and still leave 30 million Americans uninsured.

In his paper for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “The Prognosis for National Health Insurance” (http://www.lafferhealthcarereport.org/), Dr. Laffer urges Congress to work toward a solution that will not penalize the 70 percent of Americans who currently are happy with their health care arrangements, and that will not increase the federal deficit while only reducing the number of uninsured Americans by roughly one-third. Instead, Laffer emphasizes the need for patient-centered reform.

The study indicates that reforms need to focus on reducing costs by closing what Dr. Laffer has coined the “health care wedge” – a separation of effort and reward by which a patient understands the true costs of their health care and is therefore driven to be more efficient in his or her spending. This separation is actually the reason health care costs are skyrocketing, according to Dr. Laffer.

“When the government spends money on health care, the patient does not,” says Dr. Laffer. “The patient is then separated from the transaction in the sense that costs are no longer his concern. Health care reform should be based on policies that diminish this wedge rather than increase it.”

Health care costs have risen over the past 50 years, while the patient’s out-of-pocket contribution has plummeted: half of all medical expenditures in 1950 were paid by patients in the form of out-of-pocket expenses; today only 10 percent of expenditures are paid the same way.

Dr. Laffer’s research concluded that the current proposals being discussed in Washington would:
•raise total federal government expenditures by 5.6 percent more than otherwise,
adding $285.6 billion to the federal deficit in 2019;
•increase national health care expenditures by an additional 8.9 percent;
•raise medical price inflation 5.2 percent above what it would have been otherwise;
•slow U.S. economic growth in 2019 by 4.9 percent less than the baseline
scenario of doing nothing;
•increase the current net present value of funding health care re¬form based on President Obama’s priorities by $1.3 trillion (due to higher medical inflation and expen¬ditures), or $ 4,354 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.; and
•still only insure about one-third of those currently without insurance – at a cost of approximately $62,500 per new person insured.

Dr. Laffer says there are many solutions available to better the health care system without destroying what already is good in the system. The path to true health care reform is through patient-centered solutions, which emphasize the patient-doctor relationship and work to shrink the wedge by allowing patients and doctors to make more effective and economical health care choices. These solutions include:


•Provide for individual ownership of insurance policies – the tax deduction that allows employers to own your insurance should instead be given to the individual;
•Better leverage Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) – HSAs empower individuals to monitor their health care costs and create incentives for individuals to use only those services that are necessary;•Allow interstate purchasing of insurance – policies in some states are more affordable because they include fewer bells and whistles; consumers should be empowered to decide which benefits they need and what prices they are willing to pay;
•Reduce the number of mandated benefits insurers are required to cover – empowering consumers to choose which benefits they need is only effective if insurers are able to fill these needs;
•Reallocate the majority of Medicaid spending into simple vouchers for low-income individuals to purchase their own insurance – an income-based sliding scale voucher program would eliminate much of the massive bureaucracy that is needed to implement today’s complex and burdensome Medicaid system and produce considerable cost savings;
•Eliminate unnecessary scope-of-practice laws and allow non-physician health care professionals to practice to the extent of their education and training – retail clinics have shown that increasing the provider pool safely increases competition and access to care and empowers the patient to decide from whom they receive their care; and
•Reform tort liability laws – defensive medicine needlessly drives up
medical costs and creates an adversarial relationship between doctors and
patients.

The full report may be downloaded at http://www.lafferhealthcarereport.org/. Starting next week, information will be added that details the impact of the proposed legislation to several key states.

Dr. Arthur Laffer provides economic research and consulting to institutional asset managers, pension funds, financial institutions, policy research organizations and corporations. He is the creator of the “Laffer Curve,” an innovation that earned him the distinction as the “Father of Supply-Side Economics.” He was a member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board for both of his terms.

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Sunday, August 02, 2009

One conservative's call to end the so-called 'Birthers' movement

Keyes and Birthers, Buckley and Birchers, Oh My!

By Bill Pascoe, CQ Guest Columnist, CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS, July 28, 2009 – 1:29 p.m.

“Dear Birthers: Stop! Sincerely, Serious Conservatives.”

I’ve held fire for the last several months as I’ve watched the so-called “Birther” movement gain steam. At first it was amusing, like playing a drinking game — you know, like taking a shot every time Chris Matthews explains why he insists on pronouncing the former Vice President’s name “CHEE-knee.”

It’s not amusing anymore.

As one of the GOP operatives whose job it was to defeat Barack Obama in a campaign for federal office (there have only been three GOP campaigns run against him, and I’ve been involved with two of them), I can attest to the fact that nowhere in our opposition research did we find any reason to believe that the man was not a natural born citizen of the United States. (
Read more)

Bill Pascoe is CEO of The Foundation for American Freedom, a conservative think tank headquartered in Alexandria, Va. and writes the ”In the Right” blog at CQPolitics.com

Comment: I am pleased to see responsible conservatives denounce the birther movement. Please read this article. Pascoe explains that what is happening today is reminiscent of 1962 when serious conservative had to take a stand against the lunatic fringe at that time. Pascoe recalls those days and explains why reasonable and responsible conservatives must deal with the birther problem in the same manner. As I similarly said in a post yesterday, this issue is a gift to the Democrats. It is diverting attention from serious issues and making our side look ridiculous.

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Obama fans

A teacher asked her 6th grade class how many of them were Obama fans. Not really
knowing what an Obama fan is, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids
raised their hands except for little Johnny. The teacher asked Little Johnny why
he has decided to be different?

Little Johnny said, 'Because I'm not an Obama fan.'

The teacher asked, 'Why aren't you an Obama fan?'

Johnny said, 'Because I'm a Republican.'

The teacher asked him why he's a Republican.

Little Johnny answered, 'Well, my Mom's a Republican and my Dad's a Republican, so
I'm a Republican.'

Annoyed by this answer, the teacher asked, 'If your mom was a moron and your dad
was an idiot, what would that make you?'

With a big smile, Little Johnny replied, 'That would make me an Obama fan.'

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