British parliamentarian Warns America of Government Healthcare Horrors

Member of European Parliament Daniel Hannan warned Americans of the dangers of government-run healthcare on the Friday edition of the “Glenn Beck Program." Hannan, a Conservative who represents Southeast England in the European Parliament, said of the British National Health Service (NHS), “The most striking thing about it is that you are very often sent to the back of the queue.”

Beck noted the lengthy waiting times for care under Britain’s socialist National Health Service (NHS). These figures were provided by the BBC on May 27, 2009:

*cataract surgery – 8 months

*hip replacement – 11 months

*knee replacement – 12 months

*slipped disc – 5 months

*hernia repair – 5 months

Although to be fair, Hannan said, the NHS provides “not so bad” care with children but “the worst thing to be is elderly under a system like ours.” Said Hannan:

I could tell you horror stories about elderly people left starving in wards, and the amazing thing is, why do we put up with it? The reason we put up with it for so long is because it has become such a huge system. It’s got such an enormous bureaucracy based around it. We have 1.4 million people employed by the National Health Service.

The NHS is the third largest employer on the planet after the Red Army in Communist China and the Indian national railways. “Most of those 1.4 million people are administrators,” Hannan said.

And the existence of that huge electoral bloc makes it impossible to get rid of the system, Hannan said.

If Americans bring in universal healthcare, they should disabuse themselves of the notion that they can somehow come back and change the system a few years from now, Hannan said.

Facing the camera, Beck said, “America, you cannot let this thing pass. You cannot let any of this structure in…now you understand why this is going to change the face of America and it’ll do it forever.”

Hannan also spoke in Washington, D.C. last week. The title of his speech at the Heritage Foundation was “Putting the Government in Charge: Why America Should Avoid Europe’s Mistakes.”

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Health care Bill passes US senate

US President Barack Obama has praised the passage of his signature health care Bill through the Senate as historic and landmark, saying "real, meaningful" reform was incredibly close to becoming a reality.

The Senate voted 60-39 in an early morning session in favor of the controversial legislation, despite continuing opposition from many American voters concerned it will end up costing them more in taxes.

Now that both the House of Representatives and Senate have finished their votes the two chambers must reconcile their starkly different Bills in the New Year before sending the final version for Mr Obama to sign into law.

The President acknowledged the battle was not over: "With passage of reform Bills in both the House and the Senate we are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform," he said. "Our challenge then is to finish the job."

That may not be straightforward. Senator John Barrasso told Fox News the $871bn healthcare overhaul meant it would "ultimately be harder to see a doctor and healthcare costs will go up". He urged voters to lobby their politicians over the holiday season. "The American people do not support this. This is not over," he said.

The $871bn bill will allow 31 million additional Americans to buy health insurance through subsidies and newly-created exchanges for individuals and small businesses. Among other measures, it taxes certain high-value plans, and mandates that most citizens must carry health coverage or pay a penalty.

Importantly it will also prevent insurance companies denying cover to customers with preexisting health conditions.

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who shepherded the Bill though the chamber, said after the vote: "This is a victory for the American people. We've affirmed that the ability to live a healthy life is a right not a privilege for a selected few. This vote brings us one step closer to bringing Senator Ted Kennedy's dream to reality."

But the health care overhaul remains unpopular with American voters on both sides of the aisle, according to recent polls. Some Democrat activists say liberal lawmakers conceded too much ground in the struggle for 60 votes, while Republicans almost universally criticise the legislation as a new, unfunded entitlement program.

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Republicans vow to stop health reform despite passage through Senate

THE historic Senate passage of a health reform bill has bitterly divided the US political landscape, with Democrats gleeful but defiant Republicans warning the battle is far from over. All 58 Democratic senators and two independents voted in favour after months of tortuous debate to pass the sweeping reforms. But Republicans unanimously rejected the measure, denying the majority any hoped-for claims of bipartisanship. Conservatives had sought to kill the bill or at least delay the battle well into 2010, when mid-term elections will make it more difficult for centrist Democrats to support the overhaul that bears a heavy pricetag of nearly $1 trillion over 10 years.

Republican leaders were quick to seize on the economic hardships of average Americans, saying the United States cannot afford the reforms in the midst of a painful recession tagged with double-digit unemployment. Warning “this fight isn't over,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to work with his colleagues to “stop this bill from becoming law.”

They will have ample opportunity to do so, as senators must now work with their counterparts in the House of Representatives to merge their widely different versions before President Barack Obama can sign his top domestic priority into law.

The mood turned ugly earlier this year when angry audiences shouted down and targeted politicians at townhall meetings across the country. A political firestorm erupted over allegations the plan would frame a bureaucratic “death panel” to make end-of-life choices, while Republicans denounced Democratic horse trading to round up all 60 votes necessary to avoid parliamentary delaying tactics.

With all 435 House seats and at least 36 Senate seats up for grabs in 2010, Republicans are keen to seize on liberal infighting to dictate the terms of the debate and take back power from the Democrats. And many Democrats fear they could be living through a repeat of former president Bill Clinton's unsuccessful healthcare reform drive, which never even came to a vote in Congress and severely wounded his first-term administration. “Every step of this long process has been an enormous undertaking,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

But jubilant Democrats sought to bank on their major achievement in coming closer to extending health coverage to some 31 million of the 36 million Americans who lack insurance after decades of successive failures by seven presidents and multiple congresses. Many invoked Senator Edward Kennedy, the storied liberal “lion of the Senate” who made health reform the cause of his life before he died in August after losing a battle to brain cancer. “With Senator Ted Kennedy's booming voice in our ears - with his passion in our hearts - we say, as he said: The work goes on, the cause endures,” Reid said.

As Democrats scramble to get a final bill to the president's desk early next year, much of the contentious debate centres on providing a government-backed “public option” to compete with private insurers. The measure was stripped from the Senate bill but remains in the House version. Another hot-button item is the House bill's tougher restrictions on federal funds subsidizing abortions: while pro-choice lawmakers denounce the limits, centrist Democrats say they will doom the legislation without them.

House Republican Minority Leader John Boehner blasted the “2733-page government takeover of health care,” calling the process “a disgrace to our country.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was equally unforgiving. “This Christmas, the Democrats and President Obama have given America the one gift that keeps on taking,” he said.

But lawmakers got some comic relief from the ferocious debate during the Christmas Eve vote, when an exhausted Senate Reid initially voted “no” against his own bill in the heat of the moment. As the chamber erupted in laughter, he quickly corrected himself to a “yes” vote, as Senate rules allow.

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Christmas Present

Scrooge came early on Christmas Eve this year -- and he looks strangely like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Instead of "bah humbug," he delivered the U.S. Senate's version of "health care reform" -- the most expensive legislation ever passed by the Congress of the United States and the greatest expansion of government power in our nation's history. Now that's some Christmas present -- and a different way of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

If the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate succeed in cobbling together a final bill after the new year begins, every American taxpayer will take a hit in the pocketbook, and every Tiny Tim in the next generation can look forward to government-rationed medical care. According to those who purport to speak for him, President Barack Obama is celebrating this "historic event," and they aren't talking about the Nativity two millenniums ago.

For reasons apparently obscure to Obama and Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, most Americans don't seem to be as pleased at their Christmas gift as those who gave it. Perhaps that's because "We the People" see the Senate's $848 billion stocking stuffer has a price tag that would choke a reindeer.

Actually, that's just the down payment. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the first decade of the Senate's bill would cost $2.5 trillion. Even the Magi couldn't imagine a gift this precious.

Those who voted for "Change!" last year may find that's all they have left in their pockets. Administration actuaries estimate that both the House and Senate bills would accelerate growing costs for medical care. The CBO calculates that annual health care premiums for middle-income Americans would go up by $300 for individuals and more than $2,000 for families. And just in case you didn't notice, not getting health insurance is no longer an option. Higher costs may not have been on your Christmas list, but the O-Team in Washington wants you to have them anyway.

Overwhelmingly, Americans have been telling pollsters for more than a year that what they really wanted this Christmas (and the rest of the year, as well) were "jobs" and "job security." Apparently, the elves at the White House and on Capitol Hill weren't listening. Instead, they want to give us a $400 billion tax increase, new mandates on employers and higher fees for prescription drugs and medical devices. None of this would stimulate private-sector job growth.

But not to worry. "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"; there may be new jobs -- at the Office of Personnel Management. In the Senate version of this Christmas Carol, up to 10 million Americans would lose their employer-sponsored health coverage. The individual health insurance plans for millions more would be nonexistent soon. To "ensure these Americans will never be denied coverage," OPM would set up a whole new bureaucracy to administer a government-run "insurance exchange." Though OPM is the federal agency responsible for granting security clearances -- and hopeless backlogs are commonplace -- we should be encouraged that it would do better at "managing" our health insurance. Take an aspirin, and call OPM in the morning.

The O-Team is confident that shortly after we ring in the new year, the House and Senate health care bills will be melded into one giant gift that keeps on giving -- to the federal government. There are some "fine points" to work out, such as how many of our tax dollars can really be spent on abortions and how deep the cuts in Medicare coverage for seniors will be and how much more "the wealthiest Americans" will pay. But those are just "minor details" that we are assured can be "worked out in the spirit of the season." We all should remember that "it's the thought that counts."

According to Reid, the "hard work" is done. The "exhausted" members of Congress are now home on "winter recess." Mr. Obama and his family are on their "Hawaiian holiday." Notably, the word "Christmas" is rarely, if ever, used in our government.

But that proscription isn't as pervasive as some would like. Though the majority of our elected officials call their health care bills a "gift" -- yet dare not speak the word "Christmas" -- there are others who know the true spirit of this holiday. Right now, more than 250,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines are deployed far from home -- a good number in harm's way. Those who wear our nation's uniform and their loved ones embody what giving, self-sacrifice and Christmas are really all about.

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There Came a Pale Rider



Notwithstanding some minor tinkering, the U.S. Senate has now passed the government takeover of healthcare. And despite the fact that it may not contain all of the far left's extreme demands, it is almost impossible to overstate the nefarious effect of what has emerged.

As Barack Obama has rightly intoned, even as now written, without the "public option," the measure embodies the single most massive government entitlement program since social security. One-sixth of the economy will be summarily placed in the hands of federal bureaucrats. And the greatest health care system in the history of the world will be torn asunder.

Yet, as horrifying as all of that may be, it is just the beginning. Because like the Pale Rider of biblical prophecy, "hell will follow after it."

The Democrats have already made clear that the current bill is just the opening salvo of their all-out assault on every aspect of private health care. As Tom Harkin (D-IA) has said, "What we are buying here is a modest home, not a mansion. But, we can build additions as we go along … In the future, amending it and changing it isn't going to be as tough as passing it in the first place. We amend Medicare and Social Security all the time …That's what we will do in health care."

As Harkin and others have also made clear, a binding public option is inevitable. Full funding of abortions is simply a matter of some minor tinkering. And then, once the new law has inserted the federal government into every aspect of health care, a sprawling new "Department of Health" will be created, empowered to control who receives which medical procedure and – even more chilling – who does not.

And even that doesn't begin to address the full scope of the bill's malevolent intent. More than anything else, the government health care takeover is a sinister political move to insulate the Democrats in power for decades to come.

If the Democrats are allowed to implement their strategy of using the current bill as a foothold to gain a stranglehold, they will then use their newfound power to "redistribute the health" in order to establish a middle-class dependency on bureaucratic dictates and federal subsidies.

As the popular leftwing website TPM recently observed in its editorial "The Death of Conservatism": "[The bill] will re-legitimize middle-class dependence for 'security' on government spending and regulation. It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government."

So, how do conservatives and/or Republicans fight back against this blatant power grab? They have two alternatives left.

First, the Republicans in both the Senate and the House must use any means necessary to prevent the bill's final passage. That may require the most expensive, extensive political ad campaign in TV history. It may also require the most aggressive – and, to some, acrimonious – public attacks in political history. And it will most certainly require the deftest parliamentary machinations in congressional history. In fact, it will likely require all three.

Then, should the bill pass anyway, political activists at the grassroots level must extract an Election Day toll on Senate and House members in marginal seats that will make wayward politicians shudder for decades to come. Even waiting until 2012 will be too late; the Democrat strategy of control and subsidize will already be too far advanced. The electoral pogrom must begin immediately.

The Senate has now passed the government takeover of health care over the objections of the vast majority of Americans. All that remains to be determined is whose hell "will follow after it."

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Obamacare and the Legacy of Progressivism

Putting Government in the Hands of Bureaucrats and "Experts"

The suspense is over and it is inevitable that the monstrous medical care bill will become law. There is no way to sanitize this thing, period. It is the ultimate “Progressivist” legacy. Paul Krugman, perhaps the most visible “Progressive” today, supports this bill because it vastly expands the scope of the state in our lives. Like most “Progressives,” Krugman believes many things about a state controlled by people he supports. Among the “Progressive” beliefs are:

* “Experts” should decide what is best for everyone;

* The executive branch of government must employ “experts” who can make rules for everyone else;

* Governmental executives (i.e., President of the United States) should not be impeded by legislators, most of whom are not “experts,” and who fail to have the interests of everyone in mind, unlike the “experts” of the executive branch;

* Therefore, the legislative branches of government should defer to the executive branch, provided the “right kind of people” are in the executive’s chair.

Few people actually know everything that exists in this long and convoluted bill. However, that is unimportant, for in the end, the executive branch and its bureaucracies, not Congress, will interpret what the bill contains.

Most people still have the civics book ideas in their heads regarding law and the three branches of government. Americans are taught from grammar school on that the federal government has three branches: Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Federal Courts. According to the civics lessons, Congress makes the laws, the Executive Branch carries out the laws, and the Federal Courts interpret the laws.

That “model” of government disappeared even before the Progressive Era gripped the country a century ago, but it gained in strength during the Great Depression. “Progressives” such as Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Croly, believed that people had become so advanced through “science” that they no longer needed to be subjected to the messy and (to them) “chaotic” processes of private markets and legislative debate. The “experts” already knew what needed to be done, and anything done by legislatures and markets to delay the directives of the “experts” should be swept away.

Thus, Krugman can write the following, which is fully consistent with the Progressive ethos: "Now consider what lies ahead. We need fundamental financial reform. We need to deal with climate change. We need to deal with our long-run budget deficit. What are the chances that we can do all that — or, I’m tempted to say, any of it — if doing anything requires 60 votes in a deeply polarized Senate?"

Translation: We need government action, not legislative debate. The legislative branch just gets in the way of what we need. (I do find it curious that a person who had advocated the most irresponsible spending in the history of the country now says we must “deal” with the “long-run budget deficit.” What he really means, of course, is that we have to raise taxes through the roof.)

Krugman need not fear, however, for the Obama administration really did not need this bill to take over medical care. Remember the 2009 GM/Chrysler bailouts? They came entirely through the executive branch, while in 1980, Congress had to pass legislation to aid Chrysler. In other words, the financial and regulatory role of Congress has shrunk massively even in the past 30 years.

Likewise, the EPA recently re-interpreted (with permission from the U.S. Supreme Court) the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments to include carbon dioxide as a “dangerous pollutant.” The original law had no such language, but the EPA simply identified a new pollutant, and it legally can impose “solutions.”

In the end, the bill will be whatever the White House wants it to be. The ultimate legacy of “Progressivism” is that political debate no longer matters. The medical bill was bad legislation and everyone knew it, which was why the political tension was so great. However, now that Congress has given it permission to determine our medical futures, the Obama administration will waste no time imposing oppressive and costly new rules upon us, even if they are not contained in the actual bill Congress passed.

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When legerdemain is used to pass an unpopular bill

It's time to blow the whistle on two erroneous statements that opponents and proponents of the health care legislation being jammed through Congress have been making. Republicans have been saying that never before has Congress passed such an unpopular bill with such important ramifications by such a narrow majority. Barack Obama has been saying that passage of the bill will mean that the health care issue will be settled once and for all.

The Republicans and Obama are both wrong. But perhaps they can be forgiven because the precedent for Congress passing an unpopular bill is an old one, and the issue it addressed has long been settled, though not by the legislation in question. That legislation was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Its lead sponsor was Stephen A. Douglas, at 41 in his eighth year as senator from Illinois, the most dynamic leader of a Democratic Party that had won the previous presidential election by 254 electoral votes to 42.

Douglas' legislative prowess far exceeded that of current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. To hold together his 60 Senate Democrats, Reid simply dispensed favors -- eternal Medicaid financing for Ben Nelson's Nebraska, a hospital grant for Chris Dodd's Connecticut, more rural health money for Byron Dorgan's North Dakota and Montana's Max Baucus. Douglas did something far more difficult. He got the Senate to pass a bill some of whose provisions were supported by half of the Senate plus Douglas and some of which were supported by the other half plus Douglas. After passage, Douglas spent a day getting drunk -- a consolation unavailable to the teetotaling Reid.

The issue that Douglas said the Kansas-Nebraska Act would settle forever was slavery in the territories. His bill repealed the 34-year-old Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery in territories north of Arkansas and substituted popular sovereignty -- territory residents could vote slavery up or down.

We cannot say with assurance that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was unpopular; Dr. Gallup didn't start polling until 81 years later. But the results of the next election were pretty convincing. The Republican Party was suddenly created to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the 1854-55 elections transformed the Democrats' 159-71 majority to a 108-83 Republican margin. Democrats didn't win a majority of House seats for the next 20 years.

On the health care bill, there can be little doubt about public opinion. Quinnipiac, polling just after the Senate voted cloture, found Americans opposed by a 53 percent to 36 percent margin. Polls suggest that Democrats may suffer as much carnage in the 2010 elections as they did in 1854.

Nor did the Kansas-Nebraska Act settle the issue it addressed. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers fought it out in "bleeding Kansas," and Douglas felt obliged to break with the Democratic administration and disown election stealing by the pro-slavery side. The issue roused a former congressman named Abraham Lincoln to re-enter politics, and he beat Douglas in the popular vote (but not in the legislature) in 1858 and then was elected president in 1860.

A health care bill like the Senate's is unlikely to settle all health care issues either, though the ensuing political struggles will stop somewhere short of civil war. "We aren't done talking about health care," writes Atlantic blogger (and Obama voter) Megan McArdle. "We haven't even really started. Our budget problems are as big as ever, and we just used up both political capital, and some of our stock of tax increases and spending cuts, to pay for something else."

The Senate bill contains provisions that are likely to be revisited. Its language channeling federal and consumer dollars to abortion coverage is opposed, according to Quinnipiac, by a 72 percent to 23 percent margin. Its provision establishing an Independent Medicare Advisory Board and stating that it cannot be abolished except by a two-thirds vote of the Senate is of dubious constitutionality, and even if upheld in a court of law may not pass muster in the court of public opinion. Since when has Congress passed laws that cannot be repealed?

Kansas-Nebraska was an attempt to settle a fundamental issue by legislative legerdemain and political trickery. The Democrats' health care bills are an attempt to settle a fundamental issue by partisan maneuver and cash-for-cloture. As Stephen Douglas learned, such tactics can work for a while, but the country -- and the Democratic Party -- can end up paying a heavy price.

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CBO: Real 10-Year Cost of Senate Bill Still $2.5 Trillion

The Congressional Budget Office's score is in for the final Senate health bill, and it's amazing how little Americans would get for so much.

The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years. But that's not what the CBO says. Rather, the CBO says that $871 billion would be the costs from 2010 to 2019 for expansions in insurance coverage alone. But less than 2 percent of those "10-year costs" would kick in before the fifth year of that span. In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion -- for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill's full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion -- according to the CBO.

In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion. They would rise, that is, unless Congress follows through on the bill's pledge to cut doctors' payments under Medicare by 21 percent next year and never raise them back up -- which would reduce doctors' enthusiasm for seeing Medicare patients dramatically.

And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019. Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How's that for "reform"?

Even MoveOn.org says that the bill is "a massive giveaway" to private insurance companies. The CBO estimates that, from 2015-25, private insurers would receive $1.0 trillion in subsidies from the American taxpayer -- the insurers' apparent price for giving up their freedom and being controlled by the government. Congress would mandate that Americans buy the insurers' product and would redirect massive sums of taxpayer money to make that mandate more feasible. So, if insurance companies are your idea of a worthy object of philanthropy, then Obamacare is for you.

And this is the bill that Ben Nelson has decided to support?

One hopes that Nebraska voters -- and all other voters in other states who have sent Democrats to Washington -- are making a list and checking it twice, keeping track of votes on Obamacare.

As Harry Reid keeps senators in session rather than letting them go home to be with their families and celebrate Christmas, it's important to remember that this bill would not go into effect in any meaningful way until more than an Olympiad from now. Thus, it is the American voters -- and not the current Democratic Congress or the current president -- who will ultimately decide its fate. Providing reminders to representatives in both chambers of that in the coming days will be crucial to beating back the onslaught of proposed legislation that, even if it passes the Senate, would at least have to passed again by the House and would likely have to go back through both chambers in compromised form.

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Australian psychiatric hospital: Moronic official "wisdom"

Keep psych ward knives in drawers after fatal stabbings, says chief psychiatrist. THAT should be a big help! (NOT). It's often said that the psychiatrists are nearly as mad as the patients and this seems rather a good example of that

AN inquiry into the stabbing deaths of two patients at a Melbourne psychiatric hospital has come up with seven recommendations, including a requirement that knife sets be kept in drawers.

Last month two patients at the Thomas Embling Hospital - Raymond Splatt and Paul Notas - were stabbed to death. Fellow patient Peko Lakovski is facing two counts of murder.

Victoria's Chief Psychiatrist Dr Ruth Vine conducted an inquiry into the deaths, aided by a team of interstate experts with forensic clinical experience. Dr Vine said the government has accepted all seven recommendations and said the inquiry found that there was a ``very high threshold" of safety at the Thomas Embling.

The inquiry recommended that the hospital find a way for night staff, who may not deal directly with inmates, to come into contact with patients so they can assess their mental state and stability.

It also recommended that the hospital remove boxed knife sets from benches and put them into drawers. It said that while Jardine Unit patients were expected to cook and clean for themselves, ``the immediate and visible availability of implements that could be used as weapons should be minimised".

Other recommendations included the regular monitoring of relationships between the residents, getting more feedback on patients from their family and carers and documenting any early relapses of illness. "It is still the case that there has never been a serious incident committed by a patient on leave or following release from Thomas Embling Hospital," Dr Vine said. "The community can feel confident that Thomas Embling Hospital is well managed." [Two patients murdered and it is "well managed"!!??]

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Australia: Ill people hit by cuts to government health funding

Hitting businesses just ends up hitting the little guy in the end -- as business passes on its increased costs in the form of price rises

THOUSANDS of private hospital patients are being forced to pay gap fees running into hundreds of dollars because of a dispute over price increases between the big health funds and Australia's largest pathology company. The stand-off over a 30 per cent fee increase that Sonic is requiring from members of the second biggest health fund, Bupa Australia, is set to worsen next week when the dispute spreads to Medibank Private. The industry giant estimates some patients could be up to $500 out of pocket after a hospital stay. "We're extremely concerned that Sonic are forcing private health insurance members to pay excessive costs for pathology services, which in the worst-case scenario can be up to several hundred dollars," the managing director of Bupa, Richard Bowden, said. Mr Bowden said the fees demanded by Sonic were up to twice the level set by the Medicare benefits schedule.

Sonic's demand for an increase of more than 30 per cent on current contracted rates was "clearly unaffordable and unreasonable" and was well above prices negotiated with other pathology providers. The breakdown in negotiations has meant that since November 1, Bupa no longer has a contract for no-gap arrangements with Sonic, exposing patients to big surprise bills.

Medibank members will be in the same position once its contract with Sonic expires on December 31. The two funds account for about 200,000 private hospital patients a year.

The Federal Government's 8 per cent cut to Medicare payments for pathology has contributed to Sonic's demand for a big rise from health funds to cover reduced government cover and rising costs, but the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, refused to comment yesterday. "This is a commercial matter between Sonic and the health funds so it's not something we can comment on," a spokeswoman for Ms Roxon said.

The chief executive of Sonic, Colin Goldschmidt, stood by the fee rises, saying they followed years of inadequate payments from Medicare [government insurer], which reimburses 75 per cent of the official schedule fee, and Medibank [private insurer], which had covered part of the remaining costs. The rises were required to restore viability of many hospital pathology laboratories, which he said were running at a loss. Several other funds had accepted Sonic's terms. "Patients are free to change funds. We believe we cannot go on with the same fee structure we have had with Bupa and Medibank," Dr Goldschmidt said. He dismissed as "scurrilous" the Medibank claim that people could be $500 out of pocket.

The Bupa and Medibank members, who account for more than half of the 10 million Australians covered by health insurance, are the latest group to be exposed to surging gap costs. The Government's cut to Medicare rebates for cataract operations is leaving many patients with $300 gap bills.

The health funds have warned that the pathology rise, which would add millions of dollars to health insurance costs, would feed into premium rises currently before the Health Department.

Carol Bennett, the executive director of the Consumers Health Forum, said her organisation was concerned by the growing trend of pathology companies "to maximise their profits at the expense of vulnerable consumers who are often hit with large and unexpected pathology bills". "This is an industry that has enjoyed above average profits for many years now," Ms Bennett said. "No government can continue to drain taxpayers' money to fund ever-increasing pathology costs without proper checks and balances."

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British Emergency Room patient has to wait 32 DAYS as NHS target time is exposed as a sham

Labour's A&E waiting-time target was exposed as a sham last night after it was revealed hospitals were fiddling the figures. No one is supposed to wait more than four hours in hospital casualty departments before being treated - but patients are waiting far longer and one was not treated for 32 days.

Evidence collected by the Tories shows that hospitals often put patients in curtained-off 'emergency assessment units' - where they are still waiting but do not count towards the A&E target because they are technically no longer on the ward. People are waiting an average of 17 hours in these units. Emergency units are mixed-sex and often do not contain proper beds: just trolleys. Critics say they are being used as dumping grounds so hospitals can 'stop the clock' and hit the admissions target.

The Tories have pledged to scrap Whitehall targets, but fear that this will lead to a return to long waiting times. While no one in the NHS waits for more than 18 weeks for treatment; under the Conservatives waits of 18 months were not uncommon.

Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'Labour complacently claim that they have abolished long waits for patients being admitted to hospitals, but these figures show that all they have really done is fiddle the figures. 'The reality is that in some cases, patients are being left in often inappropriate wards for days and weeks at a time. It is unacceptable and has to change. 'Labour's insistence on forcing doctors to focus on ticking boxes ahead of looking after patients means that more time is spent on devising elaborate schemes to satisfy the bureaucrats rather than making sure unwell patients get better. 'We need to get back to the drawing board and once again put patients at the heart of the NHS, not Labour's targets.'

The Tories used the Freedom of Information Act to find that in one case, a patient was kept for 32 days in an admissions unit at the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch hospitals NHS foundation trust. The trust declined to say why the wait lasted so long.

Other patients are shunted off the four-hour target clock by being moved to medical assessment units, which always have beds but are still usually mixed-sex. Average waits here are even longer, at 22 hours. One patient was held in one of these units for 24 days. The Tories say the scandals are occurring because the number of hospital beds have been slashed over recent years.

Health minister Gillian Merron said: 'The reality is that the overwhelming majority of patients are seen in A&E within three hours, well within the four-hour standard and a major improvement from 12 years ago. 'The figures presented are misleading and have been deliberately combined with those of assessment units - where patients who need further observation or investigation before a diagnosis can be made are treated.

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British Coroner furious after a grandmother dies in 'burning agony' following NHS injection blunder

A grandmother died after 'gross failures' by NHS doctors who injected her lungs with a chemical that was ten times the recommended strength, a coroner ruled today. Rosemary McFarlane, 64, spent ten days in 'burning agony' after receiving the lethal dose during what should have been a routine procedure. The caustic chemical, phosphate buffered saline, burned the inside of her lungs.

The hospital's usual supplier had run out of the PBS fluid and a pharmacy was asked to provide the solution. It was bought over the internet by a junior pharmacist, who mistook '10x' on the label to mean ten bottles of the liquid rather than its super-strength concentration, an inquest heard. At that strength it is used for preserving tissue samples in laboratories and is unlicensed for use on the living.

Coroner Aiden Cotter launched a stinging attack on staff at Heartlands Hospital, in Birmingham. Addressing the workers at Birmingham Coroner's Court, he said: 'I have dealt with far too many deaths from NHS hospitals in recent years. 'We hold out our arms and trust medical professionals to inject things into us and the thought some people do not check something that could kill us is appalling. 'You hold our lives in your hands every day when you are at work when people need to act professionally. Too many people are unprofessional.' He added: 'There are many people working in the NHS who are hard working and professional, but there are a significant number who are not. 'The failures made by the doctors and the pharmacy team are gross failures. I consider they have sufficient causal connection to the death of Mrs McFarlane.' He recorded a narrative verdict with neglect as a contributing factor.

Mrs McFarlane, a mother of four and grandmother of five, from Kingshurst, Birmingham, was admitted to the hospital with pulmonary fibrosis, a lung condition which affected her breathing, on August 12 last year. The housewife's illness was serious but not life-threatening when medics decided to conduct a routine bronchoscopy to investigate the problem by pumping fluid into the lungs. It was then removed along with lung tissue samples to be sent for analysis.

A nurse administered the solution after asking the physician, Dr Aden Mansur, if it was 'OK'. Dr Mansur told the inquest: 'This was used as a mere replacement, I was not aware there are different strengths. 'I was under the impression there was only one bottle of PBS to be used.' He said he did not see '10x' on the front of the bottle and would not have known its meaning.

Mrs McFarlane's daughter Ann Marie Tranter said: 'The pain was so bad that she was crying with agony and she told us that it felt like her chest was burning.'

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Senate Sets Up Requirement for Super-Majority to Ever Repeal Obamacare

The Senate Democrats declare a super-majority of senators will be needed to overrule any regulation imposed by the Death Panels

If ever the people of the United States rise up and fight over passage of Obamacare, Harry Reid must be remembered as the man who sacrificed the dignity of his office for a few pieces of silver. The rules of fair play that have kept the basic integrity of the Republic alive have died with Harry Reid. Reid has slipped in a provision into the health care legislation prohibiting future Congresses from changing any regulations imposed on Americans by the Independent Medicare [note: originally referred to as "medical"] Advisory Boards, which are commonly called the “Death Panels.”

It was Reid leading the Democrats who ignored 200 years of Senate precedents to rule that Senator Sanders could withdraw his amendment while it was being read. It was Reid leading the Democrats who has determined again and again over the past few days that hundreds of years of accumulated Senate parliamentary rulings have no bearing on the health care vote. On December 21, 2009, however, Harry Reid sold out the Republic in toto.

Upon examination of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment to the health care legislation, Senators discovered section 3403. That section changes the rules of the United States Senate. To change the rules of the United States Senate, there must be sixty-seven votes.

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.

Section 3403 of Senator Reid’s legislation also states, “Notwithstanding rule XV of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a committee amendment described in subparagraph (A) may include matter not within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Finance if that matter is relevant to a proposal contained in the bill submitted under subsection (c)(3).” In short, it sets up a rule to ignore another Senate rule.

Senator Jim DeMint confronted the Democrats over Reid’s language. In the past, the Senate Parliamentarian has repeatedly determined that any legislation that also changes the internal standing rules of the Senate must have a two-thirds vote to pass because to change Senate rules, a two-thirds vote is required. Today, the Senate President, acting on the advice of the Senate Parliamentarian, ruled that these rules changes are actually just procedural changes and, despite what the actual words of the legislation say, are not rules changes. Therefore, a two-thirds vote is not needed in contravention to longstanding Senate precedent.

How is that constitutional? It is just like the filibuster. Only 51 votes are needed to pass the amendments, but internally, the Senate is deciding that it will not consider certain business. The Supreme Court is quite clear that it won’t meddle with the internal operations of the House and Senate. To get around the prohibition on considering amendments to that particular subsection of the health care legislation, the Senate must get two-thirds of the Senate to agree to waive the rule. In other words, it will take a super-majority of the people the citizens of our Republican elected to overrule a regulation imposed by a group of faceless bureaucrats and bean counters.

Here is the transcript of the exchange between Jim DeMint and the Senate President:

DEMINT: But, Mr. President, as the chair has confirmed, Rule 22, paragraph 2, of the standing rules of the Senate, states that on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the senators present and voting. Let me go to the bill before us, because buried deep within the over 2,000 pages of this bill, we find a rather substantial change to the standing rules of the Senate. It is section 3403 and it begins on page 1,000 of the Reid substitute. . . . These provisions not only amend certain rules, they waive certain rules and create entirely new rules out of whole cloth.”

The Senate President disagreed and said it was a change in procedure, not a change in rules, therefore the Senate precedent that a two-thirds vote is required to change the rules of the Senate does not apply. Senator DeMint responded:

DEMINT: and so the language you see in this bill that specifically refers to a change in a rule is not a rule change, it’s a procedure change?

THE PRESIDING OFFICER: that is correct.

DEMINT: then I guess our rules mean nothing, do they, if they can redefine them. thank you. and I do yield back.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER: the senate stands adjourned until 7:00 a.m. tomorrow.

That’s right. When confronted with the facts, the Senate Democrats ran for cover. The Senate Democrats are ignoring the constitution, the law, and their own rules to pass Obamacare.

More here






Senate Set To Pass Medical Overhaul, But Hurdles Remain

Senate Democrats have achieved a major victory in the health care overhaul, yet major differences over abortion and the public plan option remain between the Senate and House. Just after 1 a.m. Monday, Majority Leader Harry Reid got the 60 votes he needed to end debate on the Senate health care bill. "The Senate took another historic step toward our goal of delivering access to quality, affordable health care to all Americans," he said.

Final passage of the bill requires 51 votes and is all but guaranteed. The vote is expected Thursday. The Senate and House bills then go to a conference committee in which House and Senate negotiators will try to iron out the differences in the two bills. "There are serious differences between the two, and not the kind that can be easily put aside by saying, 'This is such an historic moment, let's get health care done,'" said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

What makes the process more difficult is that some liberals are unhappy with what the Senate produced. "Speaking as a progressive voice in this debate, the House bill is superior to the Senate bill in almost every respect," said Roger Hickey, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future. "We'd prefer to see the major shortcomings in the Senate bill rectified."

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., threatened to vote against ending debate until he struck a deal with Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., over abortion language. Under the compromise, government premium subsidies are segregated from private money so that no taxpayer dollars pay for abortion. Further, every state will have the option of banning insurance plans that provide abortion coverage from their insurance exchanges.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., called the compromise "unacceptable in a number of ways." Stupak succeeded in adding an amendment to the health bill with tougher language that prevents any federal dollars from going to pay for any part of any plan that covers abortion. He did suggest that there was room for a compromise with the Senate.

The House bill passed 220-215, leaving little margin for error. Forty-one Democrats who voted for Stupak's amendment also voted for the House bill, including Stupak. "I would certainly prefer Stupak over the Senate," said Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa. "But the only thing that will get me to vote against the bill is if it were to add to the deficit."

Altmire, a member of the moderate-conservative Blue Dog Caucus, voted against the House bill, but might change his mind. "The Senate bill is a much better bill on cost containment," he said. "I would be much more favorable toward that bill if it were the final product."

Some liberals thought the Senate abortion part went too far. "The language included in the Senate's manager's amendment still raises many questions. I am concerned that it appears to go beyond current law," Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a written statement. "I look forward to working toward a satisfactory resolution in the conference between the House and Senate."

"It will be a very long and contentious conference, given the fact that it has taken this long to pass separate bills in both the House and Senate over issues that are now at odds such as abortion, the public plan, and the financing source," said James Capretta, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics & Public Policy Center.

The House bill contains a public plan that will negotiate rates with providers. It was the product of intraparty fighting between moderate Democrats who prefer no public option and liberals who want one base on Medicare rates. The Senate couldn't resolve such conflicts, so the Senate bill has no public plan.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., co-chairwoman of the House Progressive Caucus, has called the Senate bill a giveaway to private insurance companies. "It does not have a public option to control costs," she said in a news report. "By providing low-cost competition, the public option would have forced insurers to rein in the spiraling costs of premiums."

The Progressive Caucus has 81 members, all of whom voted for the House bill. Some observers think it won't be a crippling issue. "It's an ideological fixation that the left has," Cannon said. "They'll be upset, but they'll suck it up and vote for something without the public option."

The one Senate member of the Progressive Caucus, Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., threatened to vote against the Senate bill unless it included a public plan. He relented when Reid agreed to include an additional $10 billion for community health centers.

Even some on the left think the politics in the Senate will cause House liberals to fold. "I don't want to admit that it's impossible to get a public plan," said one prominent liberal activist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I've been fighting and will continue to fight for a public option. But in order for a bill to get 60 votes in the Senate, it will be very difficult if a public option is in the bill."

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A Parody of Leadership

By Robert Samuelson

Barack Obama's quest for historic health care legislation has turned into a parody of leadership. We usually associate presidential leadership with the pursuit of goals that, though initially unpopular, serve America's long-term interests. Obama has reversed this. He's championing increasingly unpopular legislation that threatens the country's long-term interests. "This isn't about me," he likes to say, "I have great health insurance." But of course, it is about him: about the legacy he covets as the president who achieved "universal" health insurance. He'll be disappointed.

Even if Congress passes legislation -- a good bet -- the finished product will fall far short of Obama's extravagant promises. It will not cover everyone. It will not control costs. It will worsen the budget outlook. It will lead to higher taxes. It will disrupt how, or whether, companies provide insurance for their workers. As the real-life (as opposed to rhetorical) consequences unfold, they will rebut Obama's claim that he has "solved" the health care problem. His reputation will suffer.

It already has. Despite Obama's eloquence and command of the airwaves, public suspicions are rising. In April, 57 percent of Americans approved of his "handling of health care" and 29 percent disapproved, reports The Washington Post-ABC News poll; in the latest survey, 44 percent approved and 53 percent disapproved. About half worried that their care would deteriorate and that health costs would rise.

These fears are well-grounded. The various health care proposals represent atrocious legislation. To be sure, they would provide insurance to 30 million or more Americans by 2019. People would enjoy more security. But even these gains must be qualified. Some of the newly insured will get healthier, but how many and by how much is unclear. The uninsured now receive 50 percent to 70 percent as much care as the insured. The administration argues that today's system has massive waste. If so, greater participation in the waste by the newly insured may not make them much better off.

The remaining uninsured may also exceed estimates. Under the Senate bill, they would total 24 million in 2019, reckons Richard Foster, chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. But a wild card is immigration. From 1999 to 2008, about 60 percent of the increase in the uninsured occurred among Hispanics. That was related to immigrants and their children (many American born). Most illegal immigrants aren't covered by Obama's proposal. If we don't curb immigration of the poor and unskilled -- people who can't afford insurance -- Obama's program will be less effective and more expensive than estimated. Hardly anyone mentions immigrants' impact, because it seems insensitive.

Meanwhile, the health care proposals would impose massive costs. Remember: The country already faces huge increases in federal spending and taxes or deficits because an aging population will receive more Social Security and Medicare. Projections made by the Congressional Budget Office in 2007 suggested federal spending might rise almost 50 percent by 2030 as a share of the economy (gross domestic product). Since that estimate, the recession and massive deficits have further bloated the national debt.

Obama's plan might add almost another $1 trillion in spending over a decade -- and more later. Even if this is fully covered, as Obama contends, by higher taxes and cuts in Medicare reimbursements, these revenues could have been used to cut the existing deficits. But the odds are that the new spending isn't fully covered, because Congress might reverse some Medicare reductions before they take effect. Projected savings seem "unrealistic," says Foster. Similarly, the legislation creates a voluntary long-term care insurance program that's supposedly paid by private premiums. Foster calls it "unsustainable," suggesting a need for big federal subsidies.

Obama's overhaul would also change how private firms insure workers. Perhaps 18 million workers could lose coverage and 16 million gain it, as companies adapt to new regulations and subsidies, estimates The Lewin Group, a consulting firm. Private insurers argue that premiums in the individual and small group markets, where many workers would end up, might rise an extra 25 percent to 50 percent over a decade. The administration and the Congressional Budget Office disagree. The dispute underlines the bills' immense uncertainties. As for cost control, even generous estimates have health spending growing faster than the economy. Changing that is the first imperative of sensible policy.

So Obama's plan amounts to this: partial coverage of the uninsured; modest improvements (possibly) in their health; sizable budgetary costs worsening a bleak outlook; significant, unpredictable changes in insurance markets; weak spending control. This is a bad bargain. Benefits are overstated, costs understated. This legislation is a monstrosity; the country would be worse for its passage. What it's become is an exercise in political symbolism: Obama's self-indulgent crusade to seize the liberal holy grail of "universal coverage." What it's not is leadership.

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Legislating Discrimination - One more reason to oppose Obamacare

What’s the worst bill ever seriously considered for passage by the U.S. Congress? Certainly both the House health-reform bill and Sen. Harry Reid’s health bill are leading contenders.

Both proposals are obscenely expensive. Both limit our freedom to choose our families’ health care. And both would legislate racial and other forms of discrimination — making them not only unconstitutional, but immoral, counterproductive, and dangerous.

Within the last three months, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has twice sent letters to the president and the leaders of the House and Senate warning them of discriminatory provisions in both bills. But those warnings have been ignored, and the problems remain.

Take Reid’s bill. It directs the secretary of health and human services to award federal grants worth billions of dollars to educational institutions that train medical-service providers. However, “priority” for federal dollars is to be given only to those institutions offering “preferential” admissions to underrepresented minorities (according to race, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, and religion, depending on which section of the bill you look at). Thus, schools will be unable to compete for essential federal funding unless they adopt admission policies that intentionally and deliberately discriminate. It guarantees the institution of racist and sexist quotas sanctioned and encouraged by the federal government in what Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity correctly calls “a new racial spoils system.”

The bill also declares that institutions training social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, behavioral pediatricians, psychiatric nurses, and counselors will be ineligible for federal grants unless they discriminate. According to Section 756, these programs must enroll “individuals and groups from different racial, ethnic, cultural, geographic, religious, linguistic, and class backgrounds, and different genders and sexual orientations” and demonstrate “knowledge and understanding of the concerns of the[se] individuals and groups.” If the schools fail to abide by these requirements, they will be liable for “liquidated damages.”

The Senate bill even creates a federally funded and administered medical school called the United States Public Health Services Track to “grant appropriate advanced degrees.” Priority in admissions is to be given to “students from rural communities and underrepresented minorities.” (“Underrepresented minorities” is liberal code for “Asians need not apply.”)

Naturally, other sections of the bill require lots of data collection regarding race, ethnicity, sex, and so on. Those data will be used to implement quotas of all kinds and put providers at risk of being sued. For example, the data will help trial lawyers pursue “disparate impact” cases against physicians and hospitals — even if the differing health outcomes of patients have nothing to do with actual discriminatory treatment by providers. One provision even requires the secretary of health and human services to consult with “representatives of racial and ethnic minorities” about the content of promotional labels or print ads for drugs. Racial politics is poised to trump scientific accuracy in drug labeling.

In general, the bill reflects two articles of faith prevalent on the left: (1) that discrimination is perfectly acceptable when practiced in favor of certain minority groups; and (2) that racial disparities in health outcomes arise because doctors and patients don’t have the same racial or ethnic or cultural background. The latter is, of course, nonsense. As the Civil Rights Commission said succinctly, the assumption that “racial health disparities are caused by a shortage of medical professionals of particular races misdiagnose[s] the problem and may well exacerbate it.”

Ethnic and racial disparities in health outcomes are caused by a variety of factors, including minorities’ greater dependence on Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, which is notorious for providing poor-quality care. For blacks, disparities also emerge because, in the words of the Civil Rights Commission, “as a population, black patients use different doctors, clinics and hospitals than white patients.” Unfortunately, “the doctors who treat black patients . . . are less likely to be highly credentialed.” One study found that “blacks tend to live in parts of the country that have a disproportionate share of low-quality providers.” At those hospitals, “both whites and blacks tend to receive low-quality care, but since blacks are overrepresented in such areas, the quality of the hospital will cause an overstatement of the role that race plays.”

In, sum, the kind of care you get — and your individual health outcome — is determined by your doctor’s skill, not by his race or “cultural sensitivity.” Unfortunately, the Democrats’ health-care legislation will force medical institutions to hire based on race and sex, not qualifications, and to lower their admission standards, which will lead to even more “low-quality” doctors. Medical students admitted based on lower qualifications generally perform more poorly on licensing exams.

Race-based admissions end up endangering patients — such as those treated by Patrick Chavis, one of whom bled to death due to Chavis’s medical malpractice. Chavis was the black applicant admitted to the University of California at Davis Medical School even though he had much weaker academic qualifications than Allan Bakke, a white applicant who was rejected from the school and subsequently was the plaintiff in a famous Supreme Court case. Chavis eventually lost his medical license because of his gross negligence, incompetence, and “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician.”

Instead of helping ensure all Americans access to high-quality medical care, Harry Reid’s bill seems intent on populating the medical community with more bad physicians like Patrick Chavis. The bill’s discriminatory provisions are both unconstitutional and immoral. Over time, they will erode the quality of patient care. That’s no way to “reform” our health system.

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Obamacare Slaps $15,000 Annual Fee on Middle Class Families

The Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the final Senate health care bill indicates it would slap a mandatory annual fee of about $15,000 on middle-class families that earn an annual income greater than 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four) and are not provided with health insurance by their employer.

On Dec. 19, the CBO sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., analyzing the fiscal impact of the bill the Senate is poised to vote on before Christmas. The CBO analysis cites five basic facts about the bill that acting together would deal a devastating financial blow to many middle-class families if the bill is enacted and enforced as written. Here are these facts:

Fact 1: You will be forced to buy health insurance.

Page 1 of the CBO's letter to Reid says, "Among other things, the legislation would establish a mandate for most legal residents of the United States to obtain health insurance"

Fact 2: You will be eligible for a federal subsidy to help you buy health insurance, but only if you earn less than 400 percent of the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four), your employer does not offer you coverage and you purchase a government-approved plan in a government-regulated insurance exchange.

Page 7 of the CBO's letter to Reid says: "The bill also would establish new insurance exchanges and would subsidize the purchase of health insurance through those exchanges for individuals and families with income between 133 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. ... As a rule, full-time workers who were offered coverage from their employer would not be eligible to obtain subsidies via the exchanges."

Fact 3: Your employer will not be required to offer you coverage, and will face a maximum fine of $750 per worker per year if it does not.

Page 7 of the CBO letter to Reid says: "In general, firms with more than 50 workers that did not offer coverage would have to pay a penalty of $750 for each full-time worker if any of their workers obtained subsidized coverage through the insurance exchanges; that dollar amount would be indexed."

Fact 4: Your insurance provider will face new federal mandates that will increase its cost for any plan it offers you.

Page 7 of the CBO's letter to Reid says, "Policies purchased through the exchanges (or directly from insurers) would have to meet several requirements: In particular, insurers would have to accept all applicants, could not limit coverage for pre-existing medical conditions, and could not vary premiums to reflect differences in enrollees' health."

Fact 5: Your family insurance plan -- if your employer drops your coverage and you are forced to buy it on your own -- will cost about $15,000 per year when the legislation is in full force in 2016.

Page 19 of the CBO letter to Reid says the average premiums for insurance plans under the final version of the bill should be "quite similar" to the estimates the CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation made in a Nov. 30 letter to Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.: "Although CBO and JCT have not updated the estimates provided in that letter, the effects on premiums of the legislation incorporating the manager's amendment would probably be quite similar." Page 6 of the CBO's letter to Bayh said: "Average premiums per policy in the nongroup market in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal."

The Senate health care bill gives employers two powerful incentives to stop offering health insurance coverage to their workers. First, if an employer does offer coverage, its lower-wage workers will lose the federal insurance subsidy they would otherwise get. Secondly, if an employer does not offer coverage, the $750-per-worker fine it faces will be far less than the premiums it would pay if it did offer coverage.

Where does this leave a mom and dad with two children and an annual income greater than $88,200? It leaves them without employer-based health insurance and facing a federally mandated $15,000-per-year insurance bill.

If this legislation is not stopped now, there will surely be a popular rebellion when the insurance mandate hits in five years.

When that happens, the liberals will not say: We made a mistake. We never should have forced families out of their employer-based health insurance and required them to purchase a $15,000 policy. They will say: We told you so. We cannot trust these greedy insurance companies. We need a single-payer system so the government can provide everyone with health care. Just like they did in the Soviet Union.

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Cloture for Obamacare bill

President Obama’s vision of near universal healthcare took a big step closer to reality yesterday when his plans secured a watertight majority in the Senate. With Washington covered in 2ft of snow and some senators flown in on government jets to make sure they were there for the 1am roll call, all 58 Democrats and the chamber’s two independents held together to deliver the 60 votes needed to cut off Republican efforts to block the Bill.

The vote, which followed a frenzy of last-minute compromises to win over the last Democratic moderate, clears the way for a Senate Bill to win passage in a vote scheduled for 7pm on Christmas Eve. A final piece of legislation — the centrepiece of Mr Obama’s domestic agenda — is likely to reach his desk next month.

Republicans, who voted unanimously against the package, decried the $871 billion (£540 billion) ten-year Bill as a hastily crafted, fatally flawed partisan monstrosity that would raise taxes, increase healthcare costs and explode the already record budget deficit. Mitch McConnell, the senior Senate Republican, called it a mess and a “blind call to make history”.

Yet after a century in which many US presidents have talked about universal health coverage — and with some, including the Republican Richard Nixon and Democratic Bill Clinton trying and failing — Mr Obama will rightly be able to claim that he has achieved something no other US president has managed.

The White House and Democratic leaders conceded that the Bill was far from perfect, but argued that failure to pass some form of sweeping legislation would have consigned efforts to reform the health insurance industry to the political wilderness, possibly for at least another generation. Tom Harkin, a Senate liberal who had to swallow significant concessions to moderates, called his backing of the Bill “the defining vote of my career”.

Watching from the chamber’s gallery was Victoria Kennedy, the widow of Edward Kennedy — a staunch liberal who campaigned for health reform during his career. Hours before the vote she argued in a piece written for The Washington Post that her husband would have voted for the Bill because “he said that it was better to get half a loaf than no loaf at all, especially with so many lives at stake”.

Obstacles remain, but yesterday’s vote was seen as the critical hurdle Mr Obama needed to clear to see a final piece of legislation emerge. If passed on Christmas Eve the Senate Bill will need to be merged, or reconciled, with a version passed by the House last month, and there remain significant differences between the two.

Unlike the $1 trillion House Bill, the Senate version contains no government-run health insurance programme, known as the “public option”. Liberals have seen this as a crucial test for any legislation because they claim that it is needed to provide competition to keep the costs of private insurers down. Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader, dropped the public option to win over Joe Lieberman, the former Democrat turned independent, and the final Democratic holdout, Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Mr Nelson also won restrictions on the use of federal money for abortions, and an extraordinary financial gift to his home state. Unlike every other US state, Nebraska will no longer have to share the cost with central government of providing Medicaid, the medical assistance programme for low income Americans — a concession condemned by Republicans as a blatant bribe. Because Mr Reid has no room for manoeuvre — one defection would doom the Bill — the Senate version is expected largely to prevail during negotiations with the House.

Under the legislation, an additional 30 million Americans, who are currently uninsured, would receive coverage. The Bill will require nearly all Americans to obtain health insurance, or face a financial penalty for failing to do so. About half of those would be helped to do so by an expansion of Medicaid.

Small businesses would receive tax breaks to help them to provide coverage to employees. Big companies would face financial penalties for failing to do so. Insurance companies would no longer be able to decline coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

To pay for the reform, the Bill would impose an array of taxes and fees, including tax rises for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000. The most expensive health insurance coverage, known as “Cadillac plans”, will be taxed heavily. The Bill would also slash government spending on Medicare, the government subsidy programme for the elderly.

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F for Effort

A year into the Obama era, the left claims triumph (but they admit the policies stink)

By JAMES TARANTO

Well, they did it. Through a combination of intimidation and bribery (using our money, of course), the Democrats who run the Senate achieved cloture on their version of ObamaCare. The 60-40 vote was strictly along party lines, and it took place at 1:08 a.m. Monday, a time when any decent person is either home in bed or out at a bar.

So, a big triumph for the left, right? More than 64 years after President Truman proposed it, "universal health care" is finally on the verge, or at least the precipice, of becoming reality.

Only there's one problem: Many on the left admit that by their own lights, ObamaCare is bad policy. Here's a fascinating exchange from PBS's "Bill Moyers Journal" Friday. Moyers is interviewing the liberal-left economist Robert Kuttner and the liberal-left journalist Matt Taibbi. Both agree that the bill is very bad, but Kuttner wants Congress to enact it anyway:

Kuttner: Well, it's so far from what I think is necessary that I don't think it's a it's a good bill. But I think if it goes down, just because of the optics of the situation and the way the Republicans have framed this as a make-or-break moment for President Obama, it will make it easier for the Republicans to take control of Congress in 2010. It will make Obama even more gun-shy about promoting reform. It will create even more political paralysis. It will embolden the Republicans to block what this president is trying to do, some of which is good, at every turn. So I would hold my nose and vote for it. . . .

Moyers: Aren't you saying that in order to save the Democratic president and the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2012 you have to have a really rotten health insurance bill?

Kuttner: Well, when you come down to one pivotal moment where a bill is before Congress and the administration has staked the entire presidency on this bill and you're a progressive Democrat are you going to vote for it or not? Let me put it this way, if I were literally in the position that Joe Lieberman is in and it was up to me to determine whether this bill live or die, I would hold my nose and vote for it even though I have been a fierce critic of the path this administration has taken. . . .

The Democrats are really between a rock and a hard place here, because if it loses, there's one set of ways the Republicans gain. If it wins, there could be another set of ways that the Republicans gain. And this is all because of the deal that our friend, Rahm Emanuel struck back in the spring of passing a bill that's a pro-industry bill that doesn't really get at the structural problems. . . .

But now we're down to a moment of final passage. And maybe my views are very ambivalent. But I would still vote for it because I think the defeat would be absolutely crushing in terms of the way the press played it, in terms of the way it would give encouragement to the far right in this country that we can block this guy if we just fight hard enough, if we just demagogue it.

Taibbi: But couldn't that defeat turn into--that crushing defeat, couldn't that be good for the Democrats? Couldn't it teach them a lesson that, you know, maybe they have to pursue a different course in the future?

Kuttner: Well, you're younger than I am.

There is little doubt that the attitude Kuttner expresses is shared by some senators who voted "yes" at 1:08 a.m. Sunday--all of whom, by the way, also are older than Taibbi. The cynicism is breathtaking: The Kuttner caucus is willing to subject a sixth of the nation's economy, and the lives of millions, to an admittedly awful legislative scheme, on the basis of the dubious assumption that it will help their party politically in the short term, and also to spite "the far right in this country."

Change you can believe in, folks!

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The Public Option Endures

Senator Joe Lieberman should be ashamed of himself. He said he would not support a “public option.” But he did. He knows he did—and he’s hoping the American people don’t. Of course, to listen to the press coverage of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s manager amendment, one would think that taxpayer-subsidized, government-run health care was no longer a part of the proposal. For example, reports TalkingPointsMemo.com, “The public option is dead. Its successors are dead.” Oh, really.

Then, how is it that, so conspicuously in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) cost estimate, there lays some $871 billion in taxpayer subsidies from insurance coverage provisions? Is this some kind of sick joke? Do Harry Reid and Barack Obama really think they can spend a trillion dollars over ten years on government-run health care—and then convince taxpayers that they are not doing so, simply by rhetorical tomfoolery and sleight of hand?

Does it really matter if the taxpayer subsidies are funneled through insurance “exchanges” rather than monolithic bureaucracies? Did the public-private model serve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac any better when they finally went bankrupt last year in the midst of the financial crisis?

The answers to these questions are obvious enough. Whether through single-payer, co-ops, insurance “exchanges” or the like, taxpayers are going to be on the hook for a trillion dollars. As if the problem with the “public option” was a marketing difficulty to be surmounted by changing the name.

The numbers don’t lie, although they tend to be understated. For example, the CBO writes that the net cost “reflects a gross total of $871 billion in subsidies provided through the exchanges, increased net outlays for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and tax credits for small employers; [but] those costs are partly offset by $149 billion in revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans and $108 billion in net savings from other sources.”

And so, the CBO concludes, the cost of increasing subsidized health care is only $614 billion. How do they come to that conclusion? By including the $149 billion in revenues and $108 billion in “savings” in the same table labeled “net changes in the deficit from insurance coverage provisions.”

Which is simply duplicitous. To discover the hidden cost of the insurance provisions, one has to read the following footnote to that controversial table: “Includes excise tax on high-premium insurance plans.” Really, the excise tax should have been included in the table clearly labeled, “net changes in the deficit from other provisions affecting revenues.” And, as a result, that table should have read that the bill increases taxes by $413 billion, not $264 billion.

The high jinks do not stop there, however. The estimate claims that the bill “would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $132 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” That is accurate, of course, only if one assumes the impossible that the $483 billion in proposed cuts to Medicare ever occur. By far the most unpopular provision has been the inevitable rationing of care away from seniors that would occur under the Congressional Democrat proposal.

Of course, the only purpose of the phony “cuts” is to obtain a better score from CBO. The “cuts” are restored in concurrent legislation called the “doc-fix”. The result? The new “public option” will spend some $350 billion more than it takes in through revenues in its first ten years alone. And, the subsidized care provided through the exchanges will still create a state-run monopoly in the health insurance market, drive up premiums, muscle individuals out of their privately-provided care, deplete the public treasury, and once bankrupt, result in the rationing of medical treatment away from the American people, especially seniors.

All of the goals of the Democrat-sponsored plan—reducing costs, slashing the deficit, expanding coverage, etc.—all fail, raising the question: Why? The only reason is that the stated goals are a ruse. And the real goal is ideological: to move America to a socialized single-payer health system that will cost trillions—one way or another.

Senator Joe Lieberman had but one chance to stop this madness in the final cloture vote early this morning. If he had meant what he said that he did not support a “public option,” surely he would have agreed that $871 billion in taxpayer subsidies for health insurance is quite public. Instead, he voted along party lines in the monumental 60-40 vote. Changing the name and funneling the taxpayer dough through “exchanges” will not hide the facts—or his shame.

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Medicare change: Madness piled on top of insanity

The lust to score a political win on health care is making Tiger Woods look like a saint. Congressional Democrats are willing to throw all common sense overboard in their frenzy for a conquest. Of all the desperate ideas in the current health care proposals before Congress, the absolute worst is the "Medicare buy-in" slipped in by Harry Reid at the last minute.

This has long been a dream of the left: Expand Medicaid to ever-higher income levels and Medicare to ever-lower age groups, and pretty soon the two populations will meet in the middle. Voila! Single Payer Nirvana!

There are a few problems with this idea, however, starting with its effects on the health care system, on patients, and on the federal budget and the country as a whole. In a recent report, Richard Foster, chief actuary for the federal government, concluded 20 percent of all U.S. hospitals and nursing homes could go out of business under the reform proposals-even before the Medicare buy-in was proposed. Medicare and Medicaid already don't pay these facilities enough to cover their costs.

According to the actuarial consulting firm Milliman, Medicare pays hospitals $34.8 billion less than their costs and physicians $14.1 billion less than what it costs to provide services. Medicaid underpays hospitals $16 billion and doctors $23.7 billion. The only way doctors and hospitals can absorb such underpayments is by overcharging people with private insurance $89 billion a year.

Even before the Medicare buy-in proposal, the health reforms were going to cut Medicare spending by $50 billion a year, making it even harder for providers to stay in business. The Medicare buy-in makes this problem much worse by removing a large portion of the privately insured population that currently subsidizes Medicare and Medicaid, putting them into a program that pays far less than it costs. Moreover, this is a population of high users of health care services, so their impact on costs will be even greater.

The effect on health care services will be profound. Many more providers will go out of business or stop seeing people on Medicare, which will make access to services much more difficult. In addition to decreased access to health care services, it is not clear that the millions of new Medicare users will save any money or get improved health insurance. The population of ages 55-64 is the segment most likely to be insured today. According to the Census Bureau only about 12 percent of this age group is uninsured, compared to about 26 percent of people aged 25 to 34, 18.5 percent of those aged 35 to 44 and 15.6 percent of people aged 45 to 54.

Regarding quality, Medicare wouldn't even qualify as "creditable coverage" under the current proposals. The core program doesn't cover prescription drugs or preventive care, and it has no limit on out-of-pocket spending. People who signed up for Medicare would have to buy a supplemental policy to cover the gaps.

Finally, Medicare is already headed for bankruptcy. The federal government reports it will be spending more money than it takes in by 2017, and that is before most of the Baby Boom generation becomes eligible. The system is on the hook for $89 trillion in spending, and not a penny of that is actually funded. Extending Medicare is madness piled on top of insanity. And all of this is just to give the Congressional Democrats and President Barac k Obama a political "win" to hang on the wall.

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Obama and Sanders only want healthy slaves

As the U.S. Senate works feverishly to further distort the marketplace and deprive Americans of even more of what remains of their liberty by “overhauling” the health care industry, I offer you these excerpts from a December 16th article run by CBS News:

“Obama repeated his demand for action, telling ABC News ‘the federal government will go bankrupt’ if the health care bill fails. He said Medicare and Medicaid are on an ‘unsustainable’ path if no action is taken.

“To make matters more complicated, the Senate stumbled into health care gridlock after a Republican senator forced the clerk to read aloud a 767-page amendment.

“GOP Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had sought approval to require that any amendment considered by the Senate must be offered 72 hours in advance and with a full cost report.

“When he was rebuffed by Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, Coburn invoked his right to require that an amendment by another Democrat be read aloud. That sent the Senate into limbo, since the amendment by Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders was 767 pages long. It called for guaranteeing coverage to all through a public program similar to Medicare.

“Sanders withdrew his amendment some three hours later, after 139 pages had been read, with a broadside at Republicans. Pounding the lectern on his desk, his voice rising, he accused Republicans of trying to shut down the legislative process. ‘That is an outrage,” Sanders said. ‘People can have honest disagreements, but in this moment of crisis it is wrong to bring the United States government to a halt.’”

To Obama I would say that the federal government is not “going” bankrupt – it already is. The amount of federal debt is irresolvable, unpayable, and entirely beyond repair. What is even more outrageous about this statement is that Medicare, Medicaid, and so-called Social Security overall have been unsustainable for decades. What do you expect from a socialist system modeled after Otto von Bismarck’s 19th century Prussia? But Obama’s solution is pouring more money into the mouth of the monster, and further impinging upon individual choice – not necessarily health care provider, but whether one chooses to purchase health care or not. In Obama’s collectivist universe – along with most of his fellow statists – it’s okay, in terms of bureaucratically sanctioned progressive escalation of force, to ultimately kill people who choose to resist mandatory health care. Sick indeed.

Health care reform isn’t about making sure people are healthy. It never was. Like all actions of government, it is a justification for further control and enslavement of a population. It’s about non-productive fat cats living high off the hog at the expense of the politically unconnected working class. It’s about simple ruthless domination. It’s a cynical, insidious power play. If politicians and bureaucrats were truly concerned about people’s well-being (other than their own, of course), they’d resign their posts, find jobs that are actually useful and beneficial, and put government out of business forever.

This is where I need to address Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed and proud socialist directly: “’…in this moment of crisis it is wrong to bring the United States government to a halt.’”

No, Sanders, you just don’t get it. That is precisely what we need, and soon, and permanently. And since at least the time of Gustave de Molinari, market anarchism has been there, waiting only to point out the near-infinite ways in which that is possible.

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Maximum Achievable Damage

Does anyone remember the TV show "Supermarket Sweep"? Contestants would compete with one another by careening through a supermarket and grabbing as many products as they could toss into a basket. The winner was the shopper whose cart carried the biggest price tag when the bell sounded.

It's a fitting image for the way Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have handled the most important domestic issue of the decade. They've raced down the health policy aisles, sweeping items off the shelves and into their legislative carts, heedless of nutritional value, taste, or cost. As items dropped out on the hairpin turns, others were shoved into the spaces. Harry Reid inserted the Medicare "buy-in" at the 11th hour and just as quickly withdrew it under pressure. No organizing principle has governed the contents of their baskets (Pelosi added and jettisoned abortion coverage), just an urgent imperative to pass something. And now, as the clock winds down, they are declaring, as a journalistic cheerleader at the Washington Post put it, "a legislative feat of epic proportions."

Actually, it was the sloppiest and most slapdash legislative process ever to accompany a major bill. The 383-page manager's amendment, making changes to the Senate bill, was released on the morning of the cloture vote. Secrecy marked Reid's handling of the bill throughout. Not only Republicans, but Democrats, too, were kept from studying the legislation. Payoffs to wavering Sens. Lieberman, Landrieu, and Nelson, on the other hand, were blatant.

The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, in concert with the White House, have bullied, bribed, and rushed their members to vote on this legislation so that the deed could be done before constituents -- who oppose it forcefully -- could confront their representatives face-to-face over the Christmas break.

The Democrats have endured bruising internecine conflicts and risked the loss of between 20 and 40 seats in 2010 (Pelosi's estimate) for this. And what have they achieved? Their goal -- a single-payer system or a glide path to one -- remains as distant as ever. Instead, they have produced (or will, after the conference committee) an enormous new $2.5 trillion octopus of federal regulation that will increase premiums, contribute to medical cost inflation, reduce quality and choice of care, and deeply politicize an aspect of life that most Americans regard as sacrosanct. Additionally, and most alarmingly, it will aggravate the already crushing debt we are accumulating.

President Obama has betrayed every ringing promise he made about this reform. People will not be able to keep their health plans if they are happy with them. The federal government will determine which plans pass muster. As for not adding one dime to the federal deficit? Risible. The "savings" in the Senate bill consist of cuts to Medicare, not increased competition or more efficient delivery of services. And while CBO has scored the bill as reducing the deficit, CBO must abide by the assumptions Congress presents. It cannot say what we know from history to be the truth: Congress will not make cuts in Medicare. Besides, every entitlement ever enacted has wound up costing orders of magnitude more than the estimates at passage. That's why the Medicare and Social Security unfunded liability is currently $107 trillion, according to a 2009 trustees' report. The Reid bill will add at least 15 million new beneficiaries to Medicaid, accelerating that program's budget-busting momentum.

The president also promised that no one earning less than $250,000 would pay higher taxes. But under both the Senate and House bills, people who do not purchase health insurance will be slapped with an excise tax (2.5 percent of adjusted gross income under Pelosicare, and $750 or 2 percent of income, whichever is larger, under Reidcare).

The Democrats have not achieved their goal of completely lassoing one-sixth of the economy, but their mammoth legislation (the House and Senate bills both top 2,000 pages) will apply heavy-handed regulation that will further gum up a system already choking on bureaucracy. Americans will be forced to buy health insurance. Insurance companies will be forbidden to price their services according to actuarial tables. And no aspect of medical care will be free of political interference. (One section of the Senate bill reinstates coverage for DXA scans because two senators insisted upon it. Another requires breastfeeding breaks in the workplace.)

The Democrats will create, among others, the following new bureaus: The Grant Program for Health Insurance Cooperatives, the Telehealth Advisory Committee, the Community Based Medical Home Pilot Program, the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, and the Qualified Health Benefits Plan Ombudsman. In short, Democrats have done the maximum amount of damage to our system that they could manage under the circumstances.

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Dying man, 80, is denied care at home as British health chiefs say he's not ill enough for help

But the light of publicity seems to be working, as usual. Too bad if you can't get a major newspaper to campaign for you, though

An 80-year-old man with a terminal disease that has left him immobile and with swallowing difficulties has been denied NHS funding for care at home. Health bosses say Brian Stroud is not ill enough to qualify. The ruling left his 77-year-old wife Eileen, who is herself frail and on crutches, to look after him. The couple have paid £16,000 for extra care in the last six months but their daughter Debbie Hill, 46, says the physical and financial strain is proving too much. They are also struggling with the bureaucracy involved in appealing against the decision.

The Strouds, of Hollandon-Sea, Essex, have been living a nightmare since Mr Stroud was diagnosed with the terminal disease PSP (progressive supranuclear palsy) three years ago. It is a rare and incurable degenerative brain disorder, whose victims included actor Dudley Moore. They applied for NHS Continuing Healthcare funding eight months ago but have been turned down twice by North East Essex Primary Care Trust.

Mrs Hill said: 'All the health service staff who have seen my father say he qualifies for funding but we've been told his needs are only 'moderate'. He can't use his left side, he's virtually immobile and in a wheelchair, he's doubly incontinent and cannot lift his head. 'Swallowing has got more difficult, so has communicating. It seems incredible that he's been turned down. 'It's all about money - and we're disgusted that the PCT chief executive got a three per cent bonus last year for achieving financial targets'.

The Daily Mail's Dignity for the Elderly campaign has repeatedly highlighted the unfairness of the means test system when families need nursing care for conditions such as Alzheimer's. Department of Health criteria on who qualifies for help are subject to interpretation by individual NHS trusts. Many people are denied funding by primary care trusts - which have to foot the bill - because their disease does not automatically make them eligible. Campaigners say requests are unlawfully rejected or mired in the appeal system for months or years.

Mrs Hill, a mother of two, said last night: 'We want justice for dad and mum, and for everyone else in this situation. 'They've been married 52 years, they're devoted to each other, but when they need the NHS it's not there for them.'

Jane Hardy, chief executive of the PSP Association, said refusal of NHS funding was becoming more common. She said there were around 1,250 sufferers diagnosed with this 'absolutely dreadful disease' at any one time. She said: 'It's made more terrible because people with PSP know what's happening to them. 'They are trapped in a broken body, unable to communicate and knowing it's only going to get worse. 'We need a system that's not left to local officials, who often have every incentive to reject applications.'

NHS North East Essex said last night that it will soon be making a new assessment of Mr Stroud's condition as his needs have ' potentially increased'.

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British women with signs of breast cancer wait months as Labour government breaks manifesto pledge

Women with signs of breast cancer are waiting months for a diagnosis amid the failure of one of Labour's key manifesto pledges, the Government's cancer tsar has admitted. All patients with symptoms of the disease should be seen by a specialist within two weeks of visiting their GP, following a promise made before the last election. Labour said the NHS would meet the pledge by 2008 – a deadline it later extended to the end of this month.

Now the Government's cancer tsar Prof Mike Richards has disclosed that the health service is about to miss that target, with thousands of worried women waiting weeks and sometimes even months to see a hospital specialist. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he also indicated that figures which will document widespread failings to meet the target are unlikely to be published before a general election.

Charities said last night that they were "deeply concerned" that thousands of women are routinely being left in an anxious limbo, waiting to find out if they have cancer, with delays that could worsen their prognosis and threaten lives. Experts also expressed fury that Labour might not be held to account for failure to meet its high profile pledge.

In 2000, the Government introduced a maximum 2-week waiting limit for those cases where GPs suspected breast cancer. However, research found that family doctors were unable to accurately identify such cases. One study found higher rates of cancer among women whose referrals had not been fast-tracked; latest figures on newly diagnosed breast cancer sufferers show half had not been given an urgent referral.

The newer target, drawn up as part of the 2005 manifesto, means that by the end of this month, all women who see their GP about any kind of "breast symptom" should be seen by a specialist within 2 weeks. Prof Richards admitted the deadline -already postponed from 2008 – will not be hit. "The feedback I am getting is that across the country as a whole we haven't made sufficient progress," he said.

The Department of Health's national cancer director said he was "hopeful" that the commitment would be achieved six months after its deadline. "I am confident we will hit the target but I am not confident we will get there by the date we said," he said.

In a report for the NHS, Prof Richards described "significant concerns" about the NHS' efforts to reduce waiting times for women with symptoms of breast cancer. He told The Sunday Telegraph: "We know that this is a very anxious time for women. If they are being referred to a specialist because of breast symptoms they are going to worry."

Latest quarterly figures show that of more than 9,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer, almost half had not been given an urgent referral by their GP. While data was not yet available to show just how long such women were waiting, "most" would be referred within six to eight weeks of seeing their GP, as part of a wider NHS target which means all treatment should happen within 18 weeks of referral, Prof Richards said. He said shortages of staff in hospitals who could carry out tests such as mammograms were one of the main obstacles to reducing waiting times.

Prof Richards said not all symptoms of breast cancer were easy to recognise. While most women and their doctors recognised a single breast lump as a possible indication of cancer, general lumpiness, and other symptoms including blood and discharge, were less clear indicators.

Many young women worried unduly about breast cancer, while older women tended to dismiss their fears, experts said. Breast cancer is now Britain's most common cancer. Of around 45,000 cases of breast cancer diagnosed each year, more than three quarters involve woman aged 50 or over.

Prof Richards said that although official monitoring of the two week target will start on January 1st, he did not expect to publish figures until May – meaning the extent of the failure on a manifesto pledge is likely to be hidden until after a general election.

Last night Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, expressed concern about the delays for women and anger about the notion that Labour could go into the next election without being held accountable for a previous manifesto pledge. He said: "We think this is a major concern. It is five years since [then health secretary] John Reid said before the last election that all women would be seen within two weeks of referral, not just those designated as urgent." "Women are being left with enormous anxiety and stress, as well as at increased risk, for those who turn out to have cancer. Once you have gone to see your GP, and they have said you are being referred to a breast cancer clinic, it just isn't something you can forget about for five or six weeks".

The charity is furious that data detailing failure against the target might not be published until after a general election. Mr Hughes said: "We are really concerned about the lack of data on this; we just don't think its acceptable to go into an election without this information".

Dr Jane Maher, Chief Medical Officer at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "When breast cancer presents and it is not a lump, GPs can find it difficult to assess, so it is really important that all women are sent to a specialist quickly." She said it was equally important that women, especially the elderly, with the highest risk of breast cancer, went to see their GPs if they had concerns about changes to their breasts.

Anna Beckingham, aged 40, from Norwich, visited her GP practice three times because of concerns about a pea-sized lump and pains in her right breast. The mother of two was first told that the changes were "probably hormonal," and related to recent breast feeding. Discharge was dismissed as likely to be caused by an infection. On a third visit, to a different doctor at the practice, she was given a "non-urgent" referral to hospital, but it was not until March 2007 – 14 months after she first saw her GP – that she was finally diagnosed with cancer. By then, she had no option but to have a full mastectomy, to remove a growth which was now five centimetres in diameter, followed by reconstruction surgery.

Mrs Beckingham, who trained as a physiotherapist, fears many women who see their GP about symptoms of breast cancer are brushed away. "I kept saying to the doctors, I really do think this is breast cancer, but every time, they were dismissive. I am quite a confident woman and I know something about medicine so I was prepared to stand up for myself – if I had given up, I think I would be dead by now."

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The Fight Over Fascist ObamaCare Is Only Just Beginning

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who may be unaware that he is currently enjoying his final term in the U.S. Senate, claims to have the 60 votes he needs to muscle ObamaCare through his chamber. God help us if he does.

The current iteration of ObamaCare is classic Mussolini-style Fascism (i.e. corporatism). It forces Americans at gunpoint to purchase health insurance, a requirement never before imposed on the American people. The big insurance companies and the federal government have combined to subject the public to this tyrannical mandate that Americans overwhelmingly oppose. This is the economic essence of Fascism. Shame on them on all.

Nonetheless, William Kristol of the Weekly Standard offers some words of encouragement to the patriotic Americans who still believe in limited government.

Keep fighting on health care. Fight for the next few days in the Senate. Fight the conference report in January in the Senate and the House. Start trying to repeal the worst parts of the bill the moment it passes, if it does.

After all, never before has so unpopular a piece of major legislation been jammed through on a party-line vote. This week, Rasmussen showed 57% of voters nationwide saying that it would be better to pass no health care reform bill this year instead of passing the plan currently being considered by Congress, with only 34% favoring passing that bill. 54% of Americans now believe they will be worse off if reform passes, while just 25% believe they'll be better off. Making the 2010 elections a referendum on health care should work--if Republicans don't let up in the debate over the next year.

Indeed ObamaCare may be the Democrats' undoing. They are betting it all on their healthcare plan, which won't kick in for years to come. A public backlash before then could halt the program in its tracks and kill it, leading to a Bastille Day-like slaughter at the polls for the Democratic powers that be.

Of course, it would be better to abort this monstrosity while in the womb, but the beauty of politics is that the fight is never really over. There will be more battles to come.

As Kristol writes, "Fight on with respect to health care. Fight on other fronts. And recruit new fighters. In a word: Fight. "

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ObamaCare for dummies

So the Democrats have reached a "compromise" and ObamaCare is going to pass. So what's it going to cost the taxpayers and what are we going to get out of it? Simple enough questions. But try to find the straight answers to that and you'll feel like the proverbial tiger chasing his tail.

Here's the Congressional Budget Office's "scoring" of the bill: click here if you have the nerve to do so. But we'll make it simple. Jeffrey Anderson, in the Weekly Standard has done the math for us. Here's a capsule of what he found:

The bottomline cost will be $2.5 TRILLION. This according to the CBO. The numbers the Democrats are throwing out are correct but they don't include everything. Bottom line: $2.5 TRILLION.

And remember, We are already out of money; with annual deficits over a TRILLION dollars a year. This bill will add $210 billion to that deficit and even more if Congress does as it has done with other entitlement programs in the past.

"And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019. Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How's that for "reform"?"

And while the Weekly Standard does not say it, you can mark our words: health insurance premiums will go UP. Count on it.

And what about those big, nasty insurance companies? They get a $1 TRILLION windfall.

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Change Nobody Believes In

A bill so reckless that it has to be rammed through on a partisan vote on Christmas eve

And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.

Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world's greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new "manager's amendment" that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what's in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.

The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that "reform" has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

• Health costs. From the outset, the White House's core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they're sticking to that story. "Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't read the bills," Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.

The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.

These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like "community rating" because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.

As for the White House's line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed "waste," even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. "The oft-heard promise 'we will find out what works and what does not' scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice," the Stanford professor wrote.

• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.

This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they'll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.

Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so "substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance" that companies like WellPoint might need to "be considered part of the federal budget."

With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington's hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, "our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all," as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.

"The Senate isn't hearing those of us who are closest to the patient and work in the system every day," Brent Eastman, the chairman of the American College of Surgeons, said in a statement for his organization and 18 other speciality societies opposing ObamaCare. For no other reason than ideological animus, doctor-owned hospitals will face harsh new limits on their growth and who they're allowed to treat. Physician Hospitals of America says that ObamaCare will "destroy over 200 of America's best and safest hospitals."

• Blowing up the federal fisc. Even though Medicare's unfunded liabilities are already about 2.6 times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008, Democrats are crowing that ObamaCare will cost "only" $871 billion over the next decade while fantastically reducing the deficit by $132 billion, according to CBO.

Yet some 98% of the total cost comes after 2014—remind us why there must absolutely be a vote this week—and most of the taxes start in 2010. That includes the payroll tax increase for individuals earning more than $200,000 that rose to 0.9 from 0.5 percentage points in Mr. Reid's final machinations. Job creation, here we come.

Other deceptions include a new entitlement for long-term care that starts collecting premiums tomorrow but doesn't start paying benefits until late in the decade. But the worst is not accounting for a formula that automatically slashes Medicare payments to doctors by 21.5% next year and deeper after that. Everyone knows the payment cuts won't happen but they remain in the bill to make the cost look lower. The American Medical Association's priority was eliminating this "sustainable growth rate" but all they got in return for their year of ObamaCare cheerleading was a two-month patch snuck into the defense bill that passed over the weekend.

The truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run "exchanges" that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don't provide insurance or work for small businesses.

As Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute points out, this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation—whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits—very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.

For this reason Mr. Steuerle concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also "a new welfare and tax system" that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Wal-Mart may well convert them into "contractors" or do more outsourcing. As more and more people flood into "free" health care, taxpayer costs will explode.

• Political intimidation. The experts who have pointed out such complications have been ignored or dismissed as "ideologues" by the White House. Those parts of the health-care industry that couldn't be bribed outright, like Big Pharma, were coerced into acceding to this agenda. The White House was able to, er, persuade the likes of the AMA and the hospital lobbies because the federal government will control 55% of total U.S. health spending under ObamaCare, according to the Administration's own Medicare actuaries.

Others got hush money, namely Nebraska's Ben Nelson. Even liberal Governors have been howling for months about ObamaCare's unfunded spending mandates: Other budget priorities like education will be crowded out when about 21% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, the joint state-federal program intended for the poor. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman calculates that ObamaCare will result in $2.5 billion in new costs for his state that "will be passed on to citizens through direct or indirect taxes and fees," as he put it in a letter to his state's junior Senator.

So in addition to abortion restrictions, Mr. Nelson won the concession that Congress will pay for 100% of Nebraska Medicaid expansions into perpetuity. His capitulation ought to cost him his political career, but more to the point, what about the other states that don't have a Senator who's the 60th vote for ObamaCare?

"After a nearly century-long struggle we are on the cusp of making health-care reform a reality in the United States of America," Mr. Obama said on Saturday. He's forced to claim the mandate of "history" because he can't claim the mandate of voters. Some 51% of the public is now opposed, according to National Journal's composite of all health polling. The more people know about ObamaCare, the more unpopular it becomes.

The tragedy is that Mr. Obama inherited a consensus that the health-care status quo needs serious reform, and a popular President might have crafted a durable compromise that blended the best ideas from both parties. A more honest and more thoughtful approach might have even done some good. But as Mr. Obama suggested, the Democratic old guard sees this plan as the culmination of 20th-century liberalism.

So instead we have this vast expansion of federal control. Never in our memory has so unpopular a bill been on the verge of passing Congress, never has social and economic legislation of this magnitude been forced through on a purely partisan vote, and never has a party exhibited more sheer political willfulness that is reckless even for Washington or had more warning about the consequences of its actions.

These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.

SOURCE







The Obamacare horror story you won’t hear

by Michelle Malkin

The White House, Democrats, and MoveOn liberals are spreading health care sob stories to sell a government takeover. But there’s one health care policy nightmare you won’t hear the Obamas hyping. It’s a tale of poor, minority patient-dumping in Chicago — with First Lady Michelle Obama’s fingerprints all over it.

Both Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago have raised red flags about the outsourcing program, run by the University of Chicago Medical Center. The hospital has non-profit status and receives lucrative tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care. Yet, it spent a measly $10 million on charity care for the poor in fiscal 2007 when Mrs. Obama was employed there—1.3 percent of its total hospital expenses, according to an analysis performed for The Washington Post by the non-partisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. The figure is below the 2.1 percent average for nonprofit hospitals in surrounding Cook County.

Rep. Rush called for a House investigation last week in response to months of patient-dumping complaints, noting: “Congress has a duty to expend its power to mitigate and prevent this despicable practice from continuing in centers that receive federal funds.”

Don’t expect the president to support a probe. While a top executive at the hospital, Mrs. Obama helped engineer the plan to offload low-income patients with non-urgent health needs. Under the Orwellian banner of an “Urban Health Initiative,” Mrs. Obama sold the scheme to outsource low-income care to other facilities as a way to “dramatically improve health care for thousands of South Side residents.” The program guaranteed “free” shuttle rides to and from the outside clinics.

In truth, it was old-fashioned cost-cutting and favor-trading repackaged as minority aid. Clearing out the poor freed up room for insured (i.e., more lucrative) patients. If a Republican had proposed the very same program and recruited black civic leaders to front it, Michelle Obama and her grievance-mongering friends would be screaming “RAAAAAAAAACISM!” at the top of their lungs.

Joe Stephens of the Washington Post wrote: “To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Axelrod’s firm recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign—appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party ‘validators.’ They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications.”

Some health care experts saw through Mrs. Obama and her public relations man, David Axelrod—yes, the same David Axelrod who is now Mr. Obama’s senior adviser at the White House. The University of Chicago Medical Center hired Axelrod’s public relations firm, ASK Public Strategies, to promote Mrs. Obama’s Urban Health Initiative. Axelrod had the blessing of Chicago political guru Valerie Jarrett – now White House senior adviser.

Axelrod’s great contribution: Re-branding! His firm recommended re-naming the initiative after “[i]nternal and external respondents expressed the opinion that the word ‘urban’ is code for ‘black’ or ‘black and poor’….Based on the research, consideration should be given to re-branding the initiative.” Axelrod and the Obama campaign refused to disclose how much his firm received for its genius re-branding services.

In February 2009, outrage in the Obamas’ community exploded after a young boy covered by Medicaid was turned away from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dontae Adams’ mother, Angela, had sought emergency treatment for him after a pit bull tore off his upper lip. Mrs. Obama’s hospital gave the boy a tetanus shot, antibiotics, and Tylenol and shoved him out the door. The mother and son took an hour-long bus ride to another hospital for surgery.

I’ll guarantee you this: You’ll never see the Adams family featured at an Obama policy summit or seated next to the First Lady at a joint session of Congress to illustrate the failures of the health care system.

Following the Adams incident, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted Mrs. Obama and Mr. Axelrod’s grand plan. The group released a statement expressing “grave concerns that the University of Chicago’s policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA)” – signed by President Reagan, by the way – “and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.”

Rewarding political cronies at the expense of the poor while posing as guardians of the downtrodden? Welcome to Obamacare.

SOURCE