Obama Administration Tramples On First Amendment: Issues Gag Order To Insurance Companies

I got laid off from my job last Wednesday and have been busy doing things like getting doctor appointments for my family before my medical benefits run out at the end of the month as well as trying to find a new job with benefits so that I don't have to come up with a way of paying off a $1200/month COBRA payment on limited income.

Anyway, I know I've missed a few pretty big news stories since then, but I will try to get them in here as soon as possible.

Right now, I'd like to look at the latest action by the Obama administration. As I recall, Obama said he wanted a good debate about health care reform. If so, then why is he trying to silence those who want to get good infomation out to the people that will be most affected by it?

From the Washington Post:

The federal government has ordered health insurers to stop telling Medicare beneficiaries that proposed health reform legislation could hurt seniors and jeopardize their benefits. The government might take enforcement action against insurers that have tried to mobilize opposition to the legislation by sending their enrollees "misleading and confusing" messages, a senior official of the Department of Health and Human Services said in a memo Monday.

The "messages" in question very correctly note that under HR3200, Medicare benefits to seniors will be reduced. Obama and the Democrats have already publically admitted this in their attempt to show that socialized medicine will not add to the defecit.

So, why the gag order? Why worry about the insuarance companies repeating exactly what Obama and the Democrats have already said?

Proposed health reform legislation would sharply reduce funding for Medicare Advantage plans, and the insurance industry has been battling to prevent that from happening. The bill unveiled last week by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, would directly cut payments to Medicare Advantage plans by an estimated $123 billion over 10 years, and it would indirectly reduce funding for those plans by another $15.6 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

And Obama does not want people to know about this? This leads to an even bigger question. Why stifle the debate? Why suppress the very same information that Obama and the Dems have publically acknowledged?

Unless the ultimate goal is to control the debate by controlling the information, nothing else makes sense.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Insurers Criticize Administration 'Gag Order'
David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post
September 22, 2009

10 Questions For Supporters Of ObamaCare

I am actually going to write these into a letter and send them to my two Senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner.

From Dennis Prager at Town Hall:

1. President Barack Obama repeatedly tells us that one reason national health care is needed is that we can no longer afford to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. But if Medicare and Medicaid are fiscally insolvent and gradually bankrupting our society, why is a government takeover of medical care for the rest of society a good idea? 2. President Obama reiterated this past week that "no insurance company will be allowed to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition." This is an oft-repeated goal of the president's and the Democrats' health care plan. But if any individual can buy health insurance at any time, why would anyone buy health insurance while healthy? Why would I not simply wait until I got sick or injured to buy the insurance? 3. Why do supporters of nationalized medicine so often substitute the word "care" for the word "insurance?" 4. No one denies that in order to come close to staying within its budget health care will be rationed. But what is the moral justification of having the state decide what medical care to ration? 5. According to Dr. David Gratzer, health care specialist at the Manhattan Institute, "While 20 years ago pharmaceuticals were largely developed in Europe, European price controls made drug development an American enterprise. Fifteen of the 20 top-selling drugs worldwide this year were birthed in the United States." Given how many lives -- in America and throughout the world – American pharmaceutical companies save, and given how expensive it is to develop any new drug, will the price controls on drugs envisaged in the Democrats' bill improve or impair Americans' health? 6. Do you really believe that private insurance could survive a "public option"? Or is this really a cover for the ideal of single-payer medical care? How could a private insurance company survive a "public option" given that private companies have to show a profit and government agencies do not have to – and given that a private enterprise must raise its own money to be solvent and a government option has access to others' money -- i.e., taxes? 7. Why will hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies do nearly as superb a job as they now do if their reimbursement from the government will be severely cut? 8. Given how many needless procedures are ordered to avoid medical lawsuits and how much money doctors spend on medical malpractice insurance, shouldn't any meaningful "reform" of health care provide some remedy for frivolous malpractice lawsuits? 9. Given how weak the U.S. economy is, given how weak the U.S. dollar is, and given how much in debt the U.S. is in, why would anyone seek to have the U.S. spend another trillion dollars? 10. Contrary to the assertion of President Obama -- "we spend much more on health care than any other nation but aren't any healthier for it" -- we are healthier. We wait far less time for procedures and surgeries. Our life expectancy with virtually any major disease is longer. And if you do not count deaths from violent crime and automobile accidents, we also have the longest life expectancy. Do you think a government takeover of American medicine will enable this medical excellence to continue?

Question #2 is a great one.

I would ask one further question: If this socialized medicine package is so great, then why is Congress exempting itself from it? Shouldn't Congress limit itself to only those choices that Joe and Jane Average American will have?

You can access the complete column on-line here:

10 Questions For Supporters Of 'ObamaCare'
Dennis Prager
TownHall.com
July 28, 2009

Health Care Lies From The Obama White House

It's no secret that Barack Obama is getting desperate to pass a nationalized health care bill. With many Blue-Dog Democrats lining up against the measure, time is clearly running out for Obama, Pelosi and Reid. But what time-frame are we talking about?

We are talking about the time-frame in which Congress and the President can pass this disastrous bill before too many more Americans read what is in it and discover what it is really all about.

Writing for Town Hall, David Limbaugh notes several inaccuracies and outright lies in the arguments made for this socialized medicine package:

--Despite White House-generated hysteria about the urgency of reform, the only urgency is in preventing this fiasco because it would destroy America's economy and liberty. Doing nothing -- even given the many problems that exist under the present system -- is far preferable to adopting this monster. --Proponents claim the present system leaves 47 million people without insurance and unable to get it. Bull. Almost half of these uninsured could afford coverage but choose not to obtain it; almost half only remain uninsured for four months; and millions are noncitizens. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 17 million would remain uninsured after the plan is implemented. --Obama says his plan is not socialized medicine because he's just providing a "public option" to make the private insurers more competitive. Well, he's stacking the deck with mandated coverage -- which, by definition, reduces competition -- and subsidizing the public option. He would provide incentives to businesses to move employees to the public plan. Also, once you lose your insurance, your coverage choices would no longer be grandfathered, and you'd be forced to buy a plan that includes Big Brother's mandates -- meaning most would gravitate toward the government plan. A single-payer system is virtually inevitable. --The plan is being sold as a necessary element of reviving the economy. No one, including the Congressional Budget Office, believes this bill would improve our economy, and most believe it would exacerbate our problems. The bill, with its taxes on successful small businesses and its Draconian regulations, would destroy job creation, as would increases to the deficit and debt the bill would cause. --Health care costs would not be reduced, but increased -- and shifted. Studies show that preventive care measures would not reduce costs. More importantly, the CBO says that even with the planned confiscatory taxes on higher-income earners (which no one can deny constitute real costs to them) and the penalties on employers who don't provide coverage, the plan would fall $239 billion short of covering its initial cost estimates of $1 trillion. And that's assuming everything goes well. But cost estimates for government programs are always understated. The actual costs for Medicare Part A were $67 billion, seven times higher than the government's 1965 projections of $9 billion. Even worse, the Medicaid special hospitals subsidy was $11 billion, more than 100 times the government's projection of $100 million in 1987, just years earlier. The only efforts at cost containment would come from artificial price controls, which would result in rationing -- most likely for the elderly. --The quality of socialized health care would not be improved as promised, but would necessarily deteriorate, as it has in all countries that have tried it and in our own government-run experiments of veterans care, Medicaid and Medicare. It's inescapably true -- as noted by Dr. Thomas Sowell -- that price controls would reduce quality care because they would reduce the incentive to provide quality. --Health care choices would not be expanded, but essentially eliminated, by government mandate. The White House isn't even denying it would force taxpayer-subsidized abortions.

The longer it takes to get this abomination through Congress, the more time people have to study it and learn about the points Limbaugh made in the above excerpt.

Socialized health care has been a disaster in every single country it has ever been tried in. So much so that countries like Great Britain and Switzerland had to bring back privatized care in order to achieve the universal coverage that was so woefully missing from their nationalized systems.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

More Health Care Lies
David Limbaugh
TownHall.com
July 21, 2009

McCain And Obama Differ On Supreme Court Appointees, Global Warming Innocent Of Hurricanes And Doctors Head To Texas

Three really good stories today. Let's start with McCain vs. Obama on Supreme Court Justices. McCain has promised to appoint strict Constitutionalists in the mold of Justices Alito and Roberts. Obama is promising activist Justices who are more emotional rather than rational.

From the L.A. Times:

Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), in a speech two weeks ago, echoed the views of conservatives who say "judicial activism" is the central problem facing the judiciary. He called it the "common and systematic abuse . . . by an elite group . . . we entrust with judicial power." On Thursday, he criticized the California Supreme Court for giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, saying he doesn't "believe judges should be making these decisions." Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) said he was most concerned about a conservative court that tilted to the side of "the powerful against the powerless," and to corporations and the government against individuals. "What's truly elitist is to appoint judges who will protect the powerful and leave ordinary Americans to fend for themselves," he said in response to McCain. ... Obama has also praised current Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter. "I want people on the bench who have enough empathy, enough feeling, for what ordinary people are going through," Obama said.

Remember, it was "empathy" and "feeling" that brought about the socialist policies that have universally been disasters wherever they have been adopted.

It is not just a theoretical policy debate. Whoever is elected in November will probably have the chance to appoint at least one justice in the next presidential term. The court's two most liberal justices are its oldest: John Paul Stevens turned 88 last month, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75. McCain promised that, if elected, he would follow President Bush's model in choosing Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Right now, they way things are going for us Conservatives, John McCain represents our last, best hope for keeping the Judiciary in the hands of Justices who truly respect the Constitution and all of the principles our Founding Fathers wisely wrote into it.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

John McCain And Barack Obama: Two Visions Of The Supreme Court
David Savage
Los Angeles Times
May 19, 2008

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A new study coming out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is showing evidence of what many of us already knew: Global Warming is not responsible for hurricanes, despite Al Gore's screeching claim that the hurricane season of 2006 was going to be twice as bad as 2005. (The truth is that 2006 was notable for it lack of storms.)

According to Fox News:

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming's wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming and hotter waters that fuel them. Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle. What makes this study different is [Tom] Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J. He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on past studies on the dangers of global warming. He said his new study, based on a computer model, argues "against the notion that we've already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming." The study, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, predicts that by the end of the century the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic will fall by 18 percent. The number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States and its neighbors — anywhere west of Puerto Rico — will drop by 30 percent because of wind factors. The biggest storms — those with winds of more than 110 mph — would only decrease in frequency by 8 percent. Tropical storms, those with winds between 39 and 73 mph, would decrease by 27 percent.

I know the libs just hate it when they are confronted with real facts and data rather than the emotionalistic rhetoric of a man who is making millions of dollars off of his eco-pandering. (BTW, someone should ask Al Gore how much profit he makes every time he sells a carbon credit. If it is higher than the 6% margin that the oil companies make, someone should investigate Al for price gouging.)

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Study: Hurricane Spike Not Caused By Global Warming
Associated Press via Fox News
May 19, 2008

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And finally, we note that doctors are headed for Texas. Why? Tort reform. It is once again economical in Texas to open new practices withour having to worry about ambulance chasers like John Edwards using you and your insurance company to make themselves rich while at the same time driving health care prices so high that the lower class can no longer afford it.

From the Wall Street Journal:

In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies competing for business. This is driving rates down. The result is an influx of doctors so great that recently the State Board of Medical Examiners couldn't process all the new medical-license applications quickly enough. The board faced a backlog of 3,000 applications. To handle the extra workload, the legislature rushed through an emergency appropriation last year.

And this is a really good idea, one that might have stopped John Edwards from doing so much damage in North Carolina:

One judge now makes all pretrial discovery and evidence rulings, including the validity of expert doctor reports, for all cases. This creates legal consistency and virtually eliminates "venue shopping" – a process by which trial lawyers file briefs in districts that they know will be friendly to frivolous suits. Trials still occur in plaintiffs' home counties.

I know, I know. The libs will still blame the "greedy" insurance companies in the rest of the U.S. But it is clear that liberal trial lawyers who seek their fortunes at the expense of insurance companies are the true culprits.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Why Doctors Are Heading For Texas
Joseph Nixon
The Wall Street Journal
May 17, 2008