God Complex In Congress Over Healthcare Both Left and Right

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Besides being diametrically opposed to an individual mandate that all Americans carry and maintain medical insurance, there are constitutional hurdles that stand in the way that will have to be moved in order to make a mandate possible.

The United States Supreme Court has long upheld the individuals right to refuse any medical treatment, even if that refusal of treatment is detrimental to the health of that person. Therefore, logic no longer resides in the theory of a government to mandate for every citizen to buy medical insurance if the government cannot mandate that any American undergo medical treatment.

Secondly, I have not heard anyone address the number of Americans who reject medical science for religious or other reasons. While the right to deny medical treatment applies only to a competent adult, that fact that courts are over-riding parents wishes to refuse medical treatment on behalf of their minor children is an alarming trend that will eventually have to be applied to all Americans in order to enforce the individual mandate. The right to deny medical treatment will have to go. There is no other way.

I have no opinion about weather a parent has the right to deny medical treatment on behalf of a minor child, but in the case of A Minnesota mom and her 13-year-old son, who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She went on the run from law enforcers after a court ordered x-ray showed the boy’s tumors are growing.

The judge in the case says the boy’s parents are medically neglecting him. The family belongs to a church that believes in natural healing and boy himself didn’t want the treatments. As the law stand now, and perhaps rightfully so, only adults have the right to refuse medical treatment, but that right cannot stand in the face of this healthcare mandate.

Cases such as these aren’t isolated by any means, but they bring up a lot of questions. Is this showing obedience to God or is it parental negligence? Didn’t God create medical treatments so why not use them? Or has God predetermined how long we’re all going to live and using modern medicine is ignoring God’s will for our lives?

If Americans give in blindly to an individual mandate, that question will be answered once and for all. It will be the United States Government playing the role of God and denying medical treatment will be ignoring the Governments will for our lives? – God’s will is therefore moot….

Both sides of the aisle in congress are guilty and complicit in this crime against humanity. The Liberals for even entertaining a government forced mandate against the will of the people, and the bible thumpers on the right for not attacking it from a religious perspective.

They’ve attacked from the most ridiculous positions like socialism, Marxism, Nazism, etc. It’s amazing how quick they are to quote the bible, except when the perfect opportunity presents itself to do so.

Chico Brisbane

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Repubs & Dems Find Common Ground On Healthcare

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Republicans and Democrats have finally found common ground in the debate over the healthcare reform bills moving through Congress. Unfortunately for the bills' advocates, the two sides are united in their distaste for a central part of the legislation: the requirement that every American obtain health insurance.

The complaint from the right is that forcing people to buy policies is an unconstitutional infringement on individual liberty. The critique from the left is that the mandate imposes too great a burden on members of the working class, who would have to spend up to 12% of their incomes to buy policies. Some say that the mandate wouldn't be fair unless the government slaps price controls on insurers to prevent costs from climbing even further. However, a majority of Americans do not see the logic of mandating Americans to use their hard earned money to buy into a healthcare system that everyone agrees is broken.

Both sides have a point, although we don't think a mandate is unconstitutional or that price controls would be effective. It seems coercive to require healthy people to buy policies they don't believe they need. But how many drivers consider themselves accident-prone? And yet we require every car owner to maintain insurance in order to pool risks and spread the costs generated by the fraction who do get injured behind the wheel. Nor does it seem fair to demand that people buy health insurance when the price is rising so rapidly.

But it's hard to fix the inefficiencies and misaligned incentives in the healthcare industry unless all consumers are covered by insurance policies that promote preventive medicine and wellness.

Here's another reason for an individual mandate. To make coverage available to the people insurers routinely reject -- the ones with a history of costly ailments -- the bills would require that insurers offer policies to everyone, with premiums based on customers' location and age instead of their medical histories.

Such a system would give people no incentive to buy coverage, however, until they needed medical care. Unless everyone were required to obtain insurance, only the least healthy people would sign up, and premiums would skyrocket.

Individual mandates are merely a means to an end, so the bills' sponsors should be willing to explore other approaches, such as creating subsidized high-risk insurance pools to cover individuals who've been denied conventional policies.

They should also attack costs more aggressively and provide more options for affordable coverage. Still, we've yet to see an alternative that solves the inefficiencies caused by uninsured and underinsured consumers waiting too long to obtain care.

That's why we continue to back an individual mandate as an integral part of the effort to slow the growth in spending and improve the quality of care for all Americans.

Healthcare Reform Of Any Kind DOA For Obama

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The thought of an individual insurance mandate has never sat very well with many supporters of healthcare reform. Particularly now that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) unveiled his committee’s health care bill today with zero Republican support. Baucus’s bill — which former Cigna executive Wendell Potter has referred to as “an absolute gift” to the health insurance industry — includes no public option, an individual insurance mandate, and the creation of health care co-ops

The number of Democrats immediately rose in opposition to Baucus’s bill and that is a good sign. I think that those in favor of healthcare reform have been clear that there can be no real reform with out a public option to compete with the private sector medical insurance companies. To now mandate that all Americans carry health with the companies that are the reason that pushing for healthcare reform to begin with is mind-boggling. Thankfully Dems are rejecting this madness loud and clear.

Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said it has “no legitimacy,” outspoken single-payer advocate Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) declared it “dead on arrival,” and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) flatly refused to support it — one Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), praised the bill today:

“It’s a good product,” Conrad said on CNBC. “It is an attempt by the chairman to lay out what he thinks reflects best the discussions over this extended period of time. And I think the chairman has done a good job of capturing where the talks are at this point.” [...]
Conrad’s support for Baucus’s health care bill is unsurprising, given the fact that it includes his co-op proposal that he introduced shortly after a meeting with the nation’s largest insurer and health reform opponent UnitedHealth Group. BusinessWeek reported on the meeting last month:

United Health is generally well received in legislative circles in Washington. In late May its in-house point man on reform, Simon Stevens, hand-delivered a report to key senators detailing ways to save an estimated $540 billion in federal spending over 10 years.

A week later, on June 4, Stevens accompanied UnitedHealth’s chief executive, Stephen J. Hemsley, to a meeting with Senator Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), an influential moderate member of the Senate Finance Committee. Conrad has since led an effort to create nonprofit medical cooperatives that would operate much like utility co-ops as a substitute for a federally run plan. With less heft than a proposed national plan, the state medical cooperatives would pose a far weaker competitive threat to private insurers.

Conrad’s links to the health care industry don’t stop there. For the 2010 election cycle, the health care industry has donated over half a million dollars to the senator, and his former chief of staff Robert Van Heuvelen is now a lobbyist for the American Health Care Association.
As the Huffington Post’s Roy Sekoff told Ed Schultz last night, if the Baucus bill is anything, it is health insurers getting “what they paid for with the three million dollars they’ve donated to Baucus since 2003.”

Scripted Outrage Still Headlining At Tea Baggers & Townhalls

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During a townhall meeting hosted by Sen. Arlen Spector, a local woman and closet community organizer with ties to Glenn Becks 9/12 Project, asked Spector what he "planned on doing to return the country back to the way our founding fathers intended it to be according to the constitution.

Her name was Katy Abram and as a last little dig, she told Spector that George Washington would be rolling over in his grave if he could see what's happening to the country. Now there was a good question! - What has happened to the country in the short 6 months that Barack Obama has been in office?

Where were these people during the 8 years that the previous Bush administration was "systematically dismantling." the country, which is a quote that Abram used in reference to President Obama's agenda.

There is a common theme in the rhetoric among some of the most outspoken healthcare protesters that defies coincidence. Not only do the questions sound similar, but in several instances they are asked in the same chronological order. In the video clip above, you can see that thier questions are being rescited from a script in the protesters hand.

If that's the case, these people aren't protesters or even activist for that matter, they're messengers. In the case of Katy Abram, it's been pretty well confirmed that Glenn Beck is her scriptwriter.

Is Obama so powerful that over the course of 7 months, he has managed to push the country to the brink of socialism? - Has Obama managed to initiate his radical agenda to the point where people have honestly been able to rationalize carrying a fully loaded pistol or a revolver, or even an AK-47 maching gum to a townhall meeting? - Has President Obama really managed to pull-off so many changes in such a short time?

They parrot the words of Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Palin, etal. - Words like Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Hitler, Nazi, Facism, Eugenics. Yet townhall video clip after video clip, you see these protesters being interviewed and more often then not, they are completely unable to articulate the sign in they're own hand."

"Sir, why do you think President Obama is a Marxist?"

"Because he is."

"What specifically has he done that you consider Marxism?"

"Everything!"

"Well...can you give me some examples?"

"You know? - Big bail outs, He tookover the auto industry, Now he's trying to takeover healthcare."

"Well, what about the $700 billion stimulus package that President Bush signed?"

"That's what saved us. Now Obama is ruining all of the good stuff that President Bush did for this country and that kept us safe from another terrorist attack. Obama wants to close Gitmo and bring all of the terrorist here to the USA and then let them go right in our own backyards."

"So now that the Big-3 auto makers have been taken over by the Government, doesn't that mean that all of the auto workers are federal employees? - If so, shouldn't they be allowed to sign up for Government run healthcare like every other federal employee?"

"I guess we're going to have to let them! - And we'll have to do the same thing if he takesover healthcare too."

While our founding fathers where fairly successful in their forward looking approach to drafting the U.S. Constitution, they could never have imagined 2009 in their wildest dreams. Hell, they couldn't have imagined 1909 for that matter.

The Founders' vision was of a republic of self-reliant farmers and small-town tradesmen. The last thing they wanted was for New York to become the London of the New World—a mammon-worshiping metropolis in which financial capital and political capital were rolled into one.

That was why there was such resistance to creating a central bank, and why—despite two attempts—we have no Bank of the United States to match the Bank of England. That was why populists railed against the adoption of the gold standard after the crash of 1873. That was why there was so much suspicion when the Federal Reserve System was created in 1913. That was why government regulation of Wall Street was so strict from the Depression until the 1970s.

I haven't seen Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity showing up to fight the good fight with all of those that they've rallied to go and speakout on their behalf. I mean when you earn between $15 and $20 million dollars a year, is there really any kind of recession or depression that could effect you in the way that it would a person that earns an average income of $50,000 to $60,000 per year? - or even two or three time more then that?

There are only two possibilities. Either the multi-millionairs Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh are such rightous humanitarians that they have dedicated their lives to defending the average American. from circumstances that simply wouldn't effect them.

- OR -

Beck & Friends have simply managed to reach that unsophisticated segment of society whom are easily drawn to snake oil salesmen like a moth to a flame. Is it any coincidence that so many of these "protestors" are still describing a public option as a takeover of the medical insurance industry.

I spoke with one Tea Bagger today who believes that President Obama and the United States Government have already seized control of the American Auto Industry and since all of the workers are now federal employees, we'll have to provide then with gov't run healthcare. He said that we'll have to do that same thing if Obama is successful in taking Government control of the Medical Insurance Indusrty as well.

Healthcare Without A Public Option Is Not Reform

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If President Obama thinks for one second that the public option is an option, then he has greatly underestimated the core of the party that handed him the 2008 election. Healthcare reform with a mandate, but without a public option would force Americans to purchase medical insurance from the vary companies that have been fleecing America for decades.

I would hope that every democrat out there would send a clear message to the democratic majority, that any democrat who votes for a bill with out a public option is a democrats who is serving his or her last term in office. I would sooner take George W. Bush and Dick Cheney by the hand and march them right back into the White House before I would ever accept healthcare reform without
a public option.

If a public option is not viable at this time then this administration needs to come to terms with the fact that once again, the right has successfully killed health care reform. It is really that simple and should this be the case, the blame lay squarely at the feet of President Obama. For all of his oratorical ability, this President remained silent while the very industry we where fighting filled town hall meetings with staged outrage.

President Obama needs to understand that he has been handed the key to the city and to stop acting like he’s just passing through.

Palin Death Panel Rant Leads Elderly Pair To Suicide

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How long will it be before Palin's death panel rant leads elderly couple to commit suicide, and elderly women to trade sexual favors for perscription medication. "It this how it's going to be?"


With the ominous sound of the term "death panel" how long will it be before Sarah Palins right-wing rhetoric leads another elderly couple to resort to the same drastic measures as the couple in the attached video? - Or an elderly women walking the street, tradeing sexual favors for perscriptions medications that she can no longer afford?
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Government Abortion and Euthenasia?

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I think what made the McCain-Palin Campaign such a stunning failure besides Sarah Palin herself, was the over-theatrical outrage over everything Obama. He's a radical, a Muslim, not an American citizen, pals around with terrorist, sat in Rev. Wrights church for 20 years, attended a medrassa in Indonesia, hates America, etc. It certainly didn't help that The Fox News Channel was fanning the flames with half truths and out right lies, and then getting caught red handed in them one after they other.

They over-inflated crowd turnout at several of Sarah Palins rallies, and then played her long debunked "bridge to nowhere" and "state owned jet" lies night after night. They tried to pump up her foreign policy experience and paint her out to be some sort of Rhodes Scholar when anyone with half a brain could see otherwise.

Now, here we are again with another likelihood that scares the hell out of the radical right of the republican party. The likelihood of a black man becoming President seemed unimaginable, yet all of their ranting and raving couldn't stop it. It certainly was not due to a lack of effort on their part, but perhaps too much effort. If you're going to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre, you have to do it at a level that reflects the severity of the fire, otherwise it's an obvious over-reaction with an ulterior motive. Thus, the "townhaller" movement.

Those who now so desperately seek to oppose our President do so by seeking to give rise to those among our citizenry whom are ignorant and gullible enough to choose defiance over logical reasoning. The unilateral refrain is that they somehow fear changes to their own private health plans, as well as the specter of the unknown.

They remain steadfast in their lament, despite the fact the President Obama has promised his agenda will in no way upset the plans of those who don’t want change. They travel from town hall to town hall not to voice an opposing opinion, but to shout catchy talking point at the precise moment that an logical response to a question is about to be clearly articulated.

It stands to reason that health care reform cannot be so black and white that it's good for Democrats and bad for Republicans across the board. I am fortunate to work for a company that pays the first $300 dollars of my monthly medical insurance premium, which leaves me paying about $48.00 per month out-of-pocket. But what happens when someone works for minimum wage or even $11 or $12 bucks a month for that matter.

How on earth do they afford health care? - In fact, I'm not even sure why it's called health care. There is no health care in the America. There is only medical insurance and the private insurance companies who sell it at a cost that far exceeds the benefit paid back to the insured. It's really no different then automobile insurance, except with medical insurers, there are a million things that are covered in your policy, but a million unusual circumstances that ironically occur that gives them a reason not to cover a claim.

If you've ever had to seek medical attention on vacation or out of your network, the rules suddenly change as if a broken bone in my backyard is not the same as a broken bone while on vacation in Colorado. By going skiing in Colorado, I took an un-necessary risk that was likely to increase the odds of physical injury. DENIED!

It's total bullshit, and while the CEO's and top level executives of these medical insurance companies are raking in millions of dollars in salary and bonus packages from the premiums of Democrats and Republicans alike, I fail to see why in the hell they're so hell-bent on continuing to be raped with every premium payment.

I know what the real story is when I hear someone say that that don't want to support Government funded abortions and elder euthanasia. Does any person without a mental defect actually believe that? - I think so unfortunately.

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