Lets get started… First up here’s a great video of Congressman Barney Frank letting the truth about the so called “Public Plan” slip:
Yes you heard him right, a public plan will lead to a government takeover of health care… While your at it be sure to check out this video from Naked Emperor News of Pres. Obama in his own words taking about how his health care plan would eliminate private insurance.
Second, Keith Hennessey provides a great counterpoint to President Obama’s health care reform email:
Dear Taxpayer,
If you’re like most Americans, you like the health insurance you have today but think the system needs improvement. You would like things to work better, but are aware of the threats that arise from politicians who promise you something for nothing.
President Obama is correct that the underlying problem with health care is rising costs. Because of this problem, your paycheck grows more slowly, millions of Americans cannot afford to buy health insurance, and the escalating costs of Medicare and Medicaid will force enormous tax increases onto you and your children. The President wants to slow the growth of health care spending, and so do I.
Congress has gone in the opposite direction. Rather than changing incentives to reduce the cost of health insurance, they are trying to shift those costs onto someone else: you. The facts are not in dispute. The bill being developed in the House of Representatives would mean:
- No reduction in the growth of average private health insurance premiums;
- More than $1 trillion of new government spending over the next decade;
- $239 billion more debt in the short run, with ever-increasing additions to the deficit forever; and
- More than $500 billion of tax increases, including higher income tax rates on successful small businesses.
Third, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) provides a list of 10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care:
Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
Fourth, the Telegraph reports on one of the side effects of government run health care:
Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections
Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.
By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent
Published: 7:45AM BST 02 Aug 2009Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.
The Government’s drug rationing watchdog says “therapeutic” injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.
Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.
Finally, Lee Cary, has a terrific series of articles at American Thinker on the questions you should be asking your Congressperson about Obamacare:
Here’s the first installment in a series of questions you might ask your member of the House of Representatives concerning H.R. 3200 – also known as Obamacare.
The two-thousand, five-hundred and forty-one (2,541) sections of the bill can be found here. The emailed version my congressman’s office sent me covers 1,026 pages and is written in the typical legislative labyrinth of gobbledygook, replete with multi-layered, mind-numbing, cross references. There must be a software program called Obfuscate 2Max that cranks this stuff out.
Anyway, below is the first in a series of questions you might ask your congressperson if they’re either undecided about Obamacare, or support it.
Question 1: According the Section 113(b)(1)(C)&(D), “The Commissioner (appointed by the President) in cooperation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Labor, shall conduct a study of the large group insured and self-insured employer health markets. Such study shall examine the following:
(C) The financial solvency and capital reserve levels of employers that self-insure by employer size.
(D) The risk of self-insured employers not being able to pay obligations or otherwise becoming financially insolvent.”
SO, self-insuring companies will be subject to government auditing of their books to adjudicate their ability now, and in the future, to self-insure? Will that information be made available to the Department of the Treasury, including the Internal Revenue Service?
You can read the full seven part series starting with part one here. Part two is here, parts 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are here, here, here, here and here respectively.