“Our system is broken and has to be fixed.” How many times have we heard this mantra from all corners of the political spectrum. The nation has been convinced a health care reform plan must be implemented. Therefore, stopping this train will be much more difficult than diverting onto spur leading in a conservative direction. Toward this end, it’s time to capture the conversation, and move the momentum in our favor. So, on the heels of Scott Brown’s win in MA and the ensuing chaos which will result in Congress, I suggest the following new message, to be used as a launchpad for the 5 plank platform listed below.
Free Healthcare (from Govt. Control) for Free Americans
Here are the five points for genuine health care reform for free Americans.
1) Allow competition across state lines: increased competition means lower prices and ins. co. that can target market segments, creating specialized, focused plan options. The Results: lower prices which mean more people covered and increased freedom in our health care choices.
2) End govt regulating what must be covered in health care plans. Health ins companies free to create wider variety of plans, cafeteria options, offer coverages which consumers need and want. The Results: lower prices which mean more people covered and increased freedom in our health care choices.
3) Torte reform meaning caps on damages and looser pays laws. This means fewer frivelous suits and less expensive malpractice ins, meaning dr. ins rates drop, and doctors can lower their rates. The Results: lower prices which mean more people covered and increased freedom in our health care choices.
4) Allow individuals, groups and sm businesses to pool together to purchase ins as groups, thus buying at lower prices. The Results: lower prices which mean more people covered and increased freedom in our health care choices.
5) Tax advantage medical savings acct – direct payment to providers and consumers shopping for coverages means increased competition results. The Results: lower prices which mean more people covered and increased freedom in our health care choices.
It’s been awhile since VDH hit the ball out of the park like he does here. He really gets the nature of this Bourbon-esque monarchy that team Obama sees in the mirror. Well they had lots of mirrors at Versailles, as well.
United States of America does not possess the Guillotine. We have only impeachment and removal from office.
… Pity…T
Consider: The 120,000 troops in “the surge is not working” Iraq are now complaining of ennui —while the White House is paralyzed over whether to send more troops to the new escalating front in Afghanistan. How odd the present perceptions: Bush’s bad optional war became good in the public mind, and Obama’s necessary good war became bad…
The Russian gambit failed…
Sorta, Kinda, Maybe Diplomacy
…Guantanamo really will close on March 1, 2010; Iran must comply this time by June 1, 2010; all combat brigades will be out by March 2008, 2009, 2010; health care must pass by August, September, October, November…
Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel…
They got greater bailouts, higher unemployment, larger deficits, and Chicago politics…
The Cash for Clunkers program’s sudden financial insolvency is a valuable object lesson as the country gears up to consider nationalizing 17% of it’s economy under President Obama’s national health care plan. The initial one billion dollars allocated for the program was designed to boost car sales from Mid July to Labor Day, a period when retail sales slow down across the board. Thus, the plan was crafted to inspire car sales now and free up inventory dollars as the new model year approaches.
It took only 24 hours for the sheepskin clothing to come off the thief, liar, and communist thug wolf. No surprise then, that “Co-Op” sounds so much like “Commune”.
The plan here, is to get the protesters – “The Mob” – out of those townhall meetings, so that they can, in the dead of the night, in conference committee, install Osamacare against the wishes of the American people en mass. With Conservatives now outnumbering liberals in all 50 states according to yesterday’s Gallup poll, this is the fascistic democrat left’s last chance to sneak socialist medicine past us, and they know this all too well!
So that is why, if they can’t sucker the public into swallowing the “Public Option”, then they know that once Co-Op’s are in place they will soon need bailing out (taking over!) by the government.
We must remain vigilant!
THE CO-OP FALLBACK
The White House on Sunday was pushing the notion that it was willing to abandon the tent pole policy in its health care reform proposal — the so-called “public option,” more commonly understood to be socialized medicine — in favor of the national health insurance co-op proposal put forward by Sen. Kent Conrad. But some White House and Health and Human Services aides say supporters of the “public option” shouldn’t abandon hope.
Because while some media presented this as a victory for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who protested Obamacare, and leftists and progressives were angered by the apparent waving of the white flag by the Obama Administration, some administration insiders privately believe they can achieve the goal of the “public option” through the co-op plan’s implementation…
Real time, real information is entering the debate over the Obama Administration’s health care plans. However, the problem with real time streaming information is the diminished ability to distinguish between reality and falsehood. Some political operatives fan sparks into flame for the purpose of watching the fire, and they reside in both the left and the right. These political thugs have their own reasons for creating social unrest, modeled after the Saul Alinsky school of political thought. They believe that chaos and crisis is one of the most favorable environments to push forward radical, transformational policies.
Others are willing to endure the sparks in the political and media firestorms in order to uncover the truth of a matter. Their approach may create sparks, but these patriots’ goals are to discover accurate, truthful information from which the American people can make informed decisions.
For this reason, I appreciate Newt Gingrich, and his well informed political analysis. Those who firebomb Newt usually do so because he accurate, shining the light on back room political hacks and their deals often struck out of sight from the American people. Newt also has demonstrated the ability to apply political theory and forecast the outcome of a given flight path.
Newt has done it again with a recent article at HumanEvents.com. The health care debate has been stirred into a frenzy around the topic of rationed health care. A core question is whether or not seniors will receive the same quality care in the final years of their lives as they received in their youth. Words like “euthanasia” and “death panels” have been lobbed like grenades into the public forum. While the comments reflect the feelings of those behind them, the consequences of these verbal explosions are not helpful to the discussion. What is helpful is finding sources which can tell us what a US single payer, government plan will look like. Enter again Newt Gingrich.
Check out his article describing Britain’s national health care, and the decisions which the Britain’s national health board make regarding the monetary value of a human life. How much are you worth?
Great article by Mr Michael Barone, that really summarizes the crass opportunism and fanatic leftist ideology of the Unholy trinity of Obama, Pelosi and Reid…T
(Obama and the democrats) believe, out of idealism but also perhaps for crass political reasons, that America would be better off with a single-payer system like Canada’s or Britain’s. But they realize that they’re operating in a country where most voters don’t agree. The video helps us understand how they’re seeking to reach their single-payer goal through government-option stealth.
One video is worth a thousand words (or, as in this column, about 730). The video in question, put together by a group called Verum Serum, shows public statements by three advocates of single-payer (government monopoly) health insurance explaining that a health care bill with a “government option” would move America toward a single-payer government health care system. You may not have heard of the first two, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and professor Jacob Hacker. But you have heard of the third, President Barack Obama.
Schakowsky is a left-wing Democrat from the north side of Chicago and adjacent suburbs and, as chief deputy whip, part of the House Democratic leadership. The video shows her speaking to an enthusiastic group last April. She cites an insurance company spokesman as saying, “A public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer.” The audience cheers. “My single-payer friends,” she goes on, “he was right.”
Obama has never made his ultimate goal a secret; it’s the same as Schakowsky’s and Hacker’s. The video shows him saying in October 2003, when he was running for the U.S. Senate, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program.” He adds, “We may not get there immediately,” noting the Democrats must “take back” the White House and both houses of Congress — a condition fulfilled last Jan. 20.
But, as Schakowsky says, “This is not a principled fight.” Schakowsky, Hacker and Obama believe, out of idealism but also perhaps for crass political reasons, that America would be better off with a single-payer system like Canada’s or Britain’s. But they realize that they’re operating in a country where most voters don’t agree. The video helps us understand how they’re seeking to reach their single-payer goal through government-option stealth.
As public opinion turns against ObamaCare and congressional Democrats face stiff opposition from their constituents, the White House has decided to re-institute the age-old “us versus them” argument; pitting the American public versus those “evil” health insurance companies. Yet, there is a certain irony in a President inferring that the government can handle health insurance better than the private sector. After all, the most familiar government run health care option, Medicare, cannot exist without the Private Health Insurance companies that bridge the enormous coverage gaps that exist in the system.
So when you or friend wants to know why the health care debate is so important and whether the government can “do it better”? Just read this article…
There is one important thing to remember about the Health Care Transformation that President Obama is attempting to institute: “If this bill is not stopped…then there is no turning back!” Is this a decision you want you want your representatives to make without reading the bill first or even knowing who wrote it?
Remember back when B.O. said he wanted to have a “Civilian National Security Force”? Something that was “just as strong”, “just as well funded” as our military? Well he’s implemented the first phase of that force. This is from the White House website; the context is the “disinformation” surrounding Socialized Health Care:
“There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”
Now what’s FISHY is asking people to turn in their neighbor for DISAGREEING with a government program or policy!! Your casual conversations–CASUAL conversations are now subject to federal involvement! Dear God what is happening to our beloved country?
Can’t those of you supporting this man see how Fascist he is? Do we REALLY want to recreate Nazi Germany?? Hasn’t ANYONE seen the movie “Night Crossing” about the desperation of trying to escape Nazi Germany; the fear of your neighbors being suspicious of your every move??
For the Love of all that is Good, America, WAKE UP! It’s happening under our noses, and no one is making noise. Why aren’t we calling our newspapers and demanding real news? Why aren’t we bombarding our news and radio stations demanding to hear the whole story?
If they begin to infringe on our right to Free Speech in “Casual Conversation”, it’s only a matter of time before the “telescreen” becomes reality.
Osama and his ilk want to take our freedoms away, to obtain and sustain control over all of us. This is what all socialists, progressives, fascists, Nazi’s and collectivists of all stripes have in common.
They care not if global warming is taking place, you see, because their “remedy” (cap and trade) gives them control over the worlds economies.
They know full well that single payer socialized medicine has failed everywhere it has been tried, but they don’t care, because Osamacare will give them control over our lives, cradle to grave.
They knew the porkulus bill ($787 billion ) would do nothing for the economy: They didn’t intend for it to! These funds were massive bailouts for democrat interest groups, liberal state governments, unions, campaign contributors, and a peremptory bribe to the groups that had opposed Hillarycare in 1993.
Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths:
The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill — a great idea in theory — was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.
Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.
The American people already know that Mr. Obama’s plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be — a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.
These are perilous times. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care. It will be joined by controls on our lives to “protect us” from global warming, itself largely a fraud if believed to be caused by man.
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms.
There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America.
The arguments for why we should or should not have “free” health care are being thrown back and forth in a rather cavalier way. I put “free” in quotes because nothing is ever free. There is always some economy involved in getting what you want, even if it’s not a cash economy. In the case of “free” health care, there just so happens to be a huge cash economy associated with it, but there are also the economies of time and quality. In other words you will have to sacrifice a lot of cash, time, and quality to get “free” health care. As a general rule, people will never understand that. These are the same type of people that get duped by the “free orange Macbook” offers that pop up all over the Internet.
This post is not about “free” health care though, at least not directly. I want to try to put into words what I understand about the Bill of Rights and how it applies to the issues we face today. A lot of people mistake the Bill of Rights for an enumeration of our rights as citizens of this country. These people are fools. I apologize if I just called you a fool, and maybe that’s a strong word, but this aspect of our Constitution has traditionally been taught completely inaccurately in public schools, leaving most people none the wiser. One of the cavalier arguments against “free” health care is that there is no right to health care in the Bill of Rights. Therefore, no one has that right, right? Wrong. This is a horribly inaccurate argument, and I facepalm whenever I hear people and pundits use this to defend their stance against health care reform of any kind.
The Bill of Rights is actually an enumeration of the limitations of government power over our unlimited natural rights. Without getting into too much historical detail, this was a bit of a sore spot between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists during the founding of our country. Alexander Hamilton argued against any Bill of Rights because the Constitution alone gave the people all rights under the sun, and he feared listing any specific rights could be misconstrued as a limitation on other rights. Worse yet, large government might use a Bill of Rights to find more exceptions to the Constitution with which they could restrict the rights of the people even further. (Does this sound familiar?) Meanwhile, Anti-Federalists such as Thomas Jefferson feared that listing no rights would be an open invitation for large government to quickly take away all rights and perhaps turn itself into a monarchy all over again. I’ll just point out that both of these factions feared large government rule. Our Bill of Rights as we know it today is essentially a compromise between the two groups trying to prevent just that. How? Take a look at the Ninth Amendment:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Are you familiar with that Amendment? I know it’s not the First or Second, but seriously, there were only ten total in the Bill of Rights; you should know them all. The Ninth Amendment illustrates the founding fathers’ belief in personal rights before government and their anticipation that people would easily misconstrue the Bill of Rights as a limitation on personal rights (in the hopes that you would not do this.) This idea is further illustrated in the wording of other Amendments. The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law…” The Fourth says, “the right of the people to be secure…shall not be violated.” The list goes on. These are strongly worded to restrict the power of government over the people. Ultimately, we ended up with a Bill of Rights, but it was the first Bill of Rights in history to be the exact opposite of what all prior bills of rights of various nations had been, which were essentially lists of rights handed down by the ruling class to its subjects.
What does this mean for us today? First of all, it means you now know the true meaning of the Bill of Rights and can use it correctly in your political arguments. (Please, spread the word. It’s so embarrassing that we the people don’t know the true origins of our country and the meanings of its founding documents.) More importantly, it means we have all of those rights you have ever said were not rights because they were not in the Bill of Rights. That being said, what we must not forget are the responsibilities that come with every right. You cannot have a right without a responsibility. Here, I propose my Bill of Rights And Responsibilities for modern reference. This is a living document that can be amended as new issues arise. It should be easy enough to do for those of us who understand what personal responsibility means.
The Right to Own a Home: You cannot be denied the purchase of a home based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or any other discriminatory measure that violates your civil rights. Additionally, your home cannot be seized at the whim of any person or governing body. The Responsibility of Owning a Home: You have to pay for your home in order to own it. No other person, group, or government can be held responsible for the home you own. Educate yourself on what it means to have a home mortgage. If you are not fiscally ready to own a home, rent one instead. The Consequences of Failing Your Responsibilities: You will lose your home. No one will save you. Buying another home later in life may be extremely difficult. Alternatively, the government may bail you out, and everyone will hate you.
The Right to Health Care: You cannot be denied health care based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or any other discriminatory measure that violates your civil rights. Additionally, you have the right to not have your health put in jeopardy against your will. The Responsibility of Health Care: Take care of yourself. Health care begins with you. Do not run to the hospital every time you need a band-aid (or a drug fix.) Get off the couch. Eat healthy. Plan ahead. Put money aside for any chronic or unexpected conditions. Be smarter with your money. This is your health we are talking about. Why buy the 60-inch flat panel HDTV when you know you could be saving that money for a rainy day? Put your health first. You are the victim of the choices you make. People have been taking care of their families for centuries. Don’t feel entitled. Don’t be spoiled. Be an adult. The Consequences of Failing Your Responsibilities: You overcrowd the system. You become a leech on society. The government declares a national crisis and makes you and everyone else a ward of the state. Your rights to health care are now dictated and restricted by the government. You have no options. Your right to health care as it should have been is now gone.
The Right to Higher Education: You cannot be denied higher education based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or any other discriminatory measure that violates your civil rights. Additionally, you cannot be forcibly removed from school without just cause. The Responsibility of Higher Education: You have to study hard, work hard, and save a lot. If you can’t save more, study more. Scholarships come to those who earn them. Universities are competitive. If you cannot compete, you will not win. The Consequences of Failing Your Responsibilities: You won’t get into college, or you will flunk out of college.
The Right to Dance Naked to “Billie Jean” In Your Living Room: No one can stop you. You’re a dance machine. The Responsibility of Dancing Naked to “Billie Jean” In Your Living Room: Close the blinds. Don’t let the music disturb the neighbors. The Consequences of Failing Your Responsibilities: At best, your neighbors just label you a freak, never speak to you again, and post their video of you on YouTube. At worst, you get fined or locked up for any number of reasonably policed infractions.
You can see where I am going with this. My point is simple: every right has a responsibility, and failure to be responsible for your rights leads to consequence. There are no guarantees. There are no free rides. Granted, that last example was a little silly, but it just goes to show how silly it is to try to limit people’s natural rights. Some things are just nobody else’s business. We don’t need to outright ban those things.
Responsible people should be rewarded for their model behavior. Everyone has to live the life they have chosen for themselves. You will find people are much more willing to help you in your time of need if they are left to their own means of taking care of themselves than when you call upon the government to force them to take care of you. When you ask the government to solve your problems, you invite it to chip away at the unlimited natural rights you once had under the Constitution. My other point is that for those of you who claim to be “Constitutionalists” and continue to deny people rights because they are not in the Bill of Rights, it is time to wise up. We can solve the problems we face without government intervention, but we will never get there if we continue to argue inadequately. For those of you who outright reject the Constitution, well, I’m not sure what to say except that it is in fact our main governing document, and if you continue to pass legislation that contradicts it, we will have to hold you accountable for our nation’s spiraling demise.
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The arguments for why we should or should not have “free” health care are being thrown back and forth in a rather cavalier way. I put “free” in quotes because nothing is ever free. There is always some economy involved in getting what you want, even if it’s not a cash economy. In the case of “free” health care, there just so happens to be a huge cash economy associated with it, but there are also the economies of time and quality. In other words you will have to sacrifice a lot of cash, time, and quality to get “free” health care. As a general rule, people will never understand that. These are the same type of people that get duped by the “free orange Macbook” offers that pop up all over the Internet.
