Dakota Beacon

I watched an hour’s worth of footage from three of Senator Dorgan’s North Dakota town hall meetings on August 12th. The meetings were disturbing and unsettling. The tension in the rooms was clear even over broadband. It is obvious that Byron Dorgan is in favor of some kind of government involvement that goes way beyond what we have now. It is obvious that there are many who are deeply opposed to greater government involvement in health care and the invasion of privacy and destruction of personal liberty that will necessarily result.

Still, there is one statement in favor of government intrusion of health care from a member of the crowd at the Casselton meeting that is worth exploring. A lady took the mic and described how her life had been taken over by the repayment of hospital bills. She worked hard day after day, not able to advance on the upwardly mobile scale like many Americans, but only keeping her family afloat and paying off her debt to the medical industry for a health crisis in her family. She stated that she hadn’t asked for this health crisis to happen, but life dealt her a blow and she only now, years after the incident, has paid off her bill.

l applaud this woman for assuming responsibility and ascending to meeting the financial obligation (that nobody would ask for) thrust in her lap. Hear me out. At the risk of sounding uncompassionate for a moment, I would also like to say: That’s life. Each of us are dealt blows in life. Each of us face hardships not experienced by others. These experiences are often some of the most difficult circumstances in our lives. This woman did the right thing. If she doesn’t let bitterness and envy eat away at her, she will be stronger and better for the hardships she has endured and experience many positive rewards throughout life.

Although they may be heartbreakers, instances like the one mentioned are not good reasons to look to the government for a take over of American health care as this woman is doing. For every story like this, there is an equally compelling story to persuade us not to look to government as the solution. I can draw one from my own life. My husband was paralyzed from the waist down in a farm vehicle accident thirteen years ago this month. He walks now. Had government been in charge of health care, that likely wouldn’t be the case. Immediately following the accident, the emergency room doctor applied a cutting edge treatment for spinal cord injuries that she had learned about only the week before that. There is a very small window of time (less than an hour) for affective application of this treatment. He was treated in time with results that impressed every doctor he saw thereafter.

My husband walks, but he lives with disturbing daily after-effects from the accident that most people his age have never thought of, consequences he never asked for: That’s life. He is a stronger, better person because of it and has a rare magnanimity and appreciation for life.

Recently, a friend spent two hours dealing with farm management issues in the Farm Service Agency (FSA), an agency of the federal government. He had an issue that he raised months ago with the agency, but his concern was not being addressed. He went in to get it resolved. The whole office was filled with tension. A neighbor of his who worked at the agency said that in the over twenty years she had worked for the FSA (previously ASCS), she had never experienced a worse year. Everybody was on edge. Employees, including herself, were not sleeping. After standing there for two hours, my friend learned that the power of attorney form that had been signed by his wife and on file was lost. He had to travel for an hour to obtain his wife’s signature. When he returned, the lady behind the desk told him that he had been given the wrong forms and would have to start over again.

We must ask ourselves: Do we really want our life and death decisions to be rubber-stamped by overworked, overstressed government employees? Every intuition based on past experiences with government agencies informs us that this will also be the case in government managed health care. Under a system like that, what incentive would the doctors have to attend seminars on the latest treatment technology? What incentive would companies have for developing them? Had my husband stepped into a hospital environment fraught with internal pressures from ever-changing government policy where doctors and nurses were overworked and underpaid and where long lines of unattended patients were waiting, would he have received timely treatment? I think it is safe to say no. He would likely have lived the last thirteen years in a wheelchair and still be there today.

But the woman whose hospital debt took over her financial life could use an arm around her shoulder, a little support in the midst of trauma—believe me, I know. Instead of handing the whole American health care system over to the federal government because of such instances, why not provide innovative ways of dealing with crisis? In this example, why not have a well-screened program with rigorous criteria for a compassion fund? It could be administered by the government if we are determined to see the government as provider, but better yet, why not give philanthropic organizations and/or businesses incentives and cooperation with the government to provide this kind of fund for people debt-ridden with hospital bills?

Senators Dorgan, Conrad and Congressman Pomeroy, there are a myriad of solutions to some of the most painful problems associated with our current health care system. Don’t turn control of our personal lives over to to government and shut down the private health care system. Look for freedom-friendly free market solutions. And fellow citizens, let’s be responsible. Let’s get creative, and let’s stop looking for parental care and crisis-relief from the government alone.

A few days ago I received an e-mail from an acquaintance that I also count as a friend, with the Subject “Wild Rumors Needing Correction”. My friend, a well-known member of this community and very active within the local Democratic Party surprised me with his e-mail. The information, which was contained therein, concerned the health care plan being supported by the Obama administration. This information was very similar to e-mails I received from the White House, by David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to the President. Frankly I was surprised that I received any communication from the White House, as I had no idea that I was in their address book.

In my response to my friend I told him that my problem with ANY federal government run health care plan was that it was unconstitutional. The issue should NOT be if H.R. 676 (Rep. John Conyers Health Care Bill, which is one of several being considered) is good or bad for America, but whether or not the Congress has authority under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The same is true for the bailout and/or stimulus legislation passed by Congress in 2008 and 2009, with the take-over of the banking, insurance, financial and automotive industries. The answer is, of course, none of these bills are constitutional.

This is what the American people should be asking their representatives – does Congress have the POWER to be in the business of providing health care, or for running GM or Chrysler or AIG, or the control of any corporation or business? All one has to do is get a copy of the Constitution and read what it says about POWERS delegated to the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches of the federal government. If you need further explanation on the intent of the signers of this document, I suggest that you get a copy of The Federalist Papers, or other material written by several of the Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine, or James Madison (who is credited with actually writing the Constitution).

I recently read an excerpt from Myron Magnet’s book The Dream and the Nightmare, the Sixties Legacy to the Underclass (1993), which talks about how most members of Congress (and politicians in general) view their “role” as “doing good deeds with other peoples money with the feeling that the boundaries of the Constitution is irrelevant.”  Here is the excerpt:

“Instead of ending poverty for the Have- Nots - despite the civil rights movement - despite the War on Poverty - the new culture order fostered, in the underclass and the homeless, a new intractable poverty that shocked and dismayed, that seemed to belong more to the era of ragged chimney sweeps than to modern America, that went beyond the economic realm into the realm of pathology. Poverty turned pathological . . . because the new culture that the Haves invented - their remade system of beliefs, norms and institutions - permitted, even celebrated, behavior that, when poor people practiced it, will imprison them inextricably in poverty . . . Worse, during the sixties and seventies, the new culture of the Haves, in its quest for personal liberation, withdrew respect from the behavior and attitudes that have traditionally boosted people up the economic ladder - deferral of gratification, sobriety, thrift, dogged industry, and so on through the whole catalogue of antique-sounding bourgeois virtues.” (Mr. Magnet was the editor in chief of the City Journal, the Manhattan Institute.)

What has this to do with the issues in our world of 2009? Everything! The “modern liberal progressive” politician has decided that our document of 221 years is no longer relevant in 21st Century America, and therefore the boundaries under the Constitution no longer need to be respected. This phenomenon did not just happen after the 2008 election. This trend began in earnest at the beginning of the 20th Century, and has escalated ever since.  We have ceased to be a nation of “laws”, but rather of “men”.

Compassion is NOT the government’s business. Compassion is the business of the Society of People. Before the advent of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all of the other government social experiments it was the churches, local charities, the Salvation Army, and other organizations that were aware of the needs of those less fortunate. This was true compassion, not the government programs designed to “fit the needs of all”, but to make our society dependent on government.

James Madison in Federalist No. 57 gave the following concerning the House of Representatives:

“If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, [is] a spirit which nourishes freedom and in return is nourished by it.”

And a little further in No. 57: “The House of Representatives . . . can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples, but without which every government degenerates into tyranny,”

In closing I am reminded of the statement of our greatest Statesman, Thomas Jefferson, from his autobiography (1821) on the federal government: “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread”. He also stated in his first Inaugural Address the following: “A wise and frugal government shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

James B. Plair, Lt. Col. USAR-Ret. Author of A Study of the United States Constitution and the Federalist Papers

By Sally Morris

Every city has one.  In our town it is Reeves Drive.  These are the homes on the tree-lined boulevards that staff recruiters take prospects cruising past, the ones you need special permission to see if they are for sale.  The homes of the wealthy:  doctors, lawyers, CEO’s, heirs of family fortunes.  But they’re often not as “environmentally friendly” as those being built today.
What if the City decided to bail out some unsuccessful local contractors?  Some clever councilman thinks up this idea:  We have these guys build, at our expense, several tracts of energy-efficient homes, sparing no expense.  Then we offer the owners of the nice homes on Reeves the equivalent of a down payment on one of these new structures, free.  They simply turn in the present home and pick out a new one.  Maybe the contractors will even throw in more cash incentives for the buyers.  Next we demolish their old homes.  We will make sure that no one ever lives in them again by decreeing that every system be destroyed.  To qualify the trade-in home must be worth at least $200,000, fully insured, all systems working, no flaws.  The City goes out and borrows money from some bank in New York and the deals are made.  It’s a huge success.  The wealthy are lining up to become owners of these new homes, handing in the keys to their old houses, the contractors are perking up with optimism as they count up their profits.  First, acid is poured into the furnace, just to make sure no miscreant tries to salvage anything.  Then the bulldozers move in.  As the roof caves in and the timbers crash in a cloud of dust on the hardwood floors, the oak woodwork snaps and the ceramic fixtures and windows shatter.  Jackhammers are brought in to pulverize even the bricks so no one tries to use them as flower borders.  Then it is over and everything is shoveled into the hole.
Watching this show are the residents of the local tenements, the renters of small, marginal houses, the trailer dwellers.  These people and the rest of the residents of the city have paid for this through their taxes.  These are, in actuality, their property.  The guy from the trailer park sees this through his tears.  He has been trying to get enough money together for two years so he can make a down payment on a modest home of his own.  The tenant in the apartment building realizes he will have to compete for homes in a much tighter market.  The renter’s dreams of ownership seem to be fleeing as he watches.

Well, the “upside” is that the contractor’s happy and so are the owners of new homes.  Everyone else is devastated by this misuse of their taxes.  People wonder why the city didn’t give the down payment to the little guy from the mobile home park, or the family in the housing project instead.  They could move up [the ladder and then the big guys could just by the new houses.  If the rusty old trailer were demolished instead of the $200,000 home, probably even more heat loss could be avoided.

Does the above scenario sound a lot like “Cash for Clunkers”?  It should.  While millions of Americans watched the YOUTUBE video of a Volvo being destroyed before their eyes, the Senate voted to extend the program.  We even hear from some misguided “conservatives” in support of this nonsense, one being Mike Huckabee.  One is forced to wonder why.

Let’s step back just a moment and get it in perspective.  “Cash for Clunkers” was packaged as a great, innovative “stimulus” to the auto industry.  The second reason cited was that it was a sound environmental program to get old clunkers off the streets for good, replaced by new, green cars.  Win-win?

Well, except for some other, far more serious issues.  To see what they are and what they do and why we need to look at who is being hurt by this.  The poorer Americans will suffer from this program more than anyone else.  The nasty truth is that “Cash for Clunkers” is not about stimulating the economy nor about the environment.  It is nothing more nor less than a program of social engineering.

At best the only groups which benefit from the program economically are auto dealerships (that is the ones Obama allowed to remain in business after closing all of the others arbitrarily) and the wealthy who can afford to shop for $20,000 to $40,000 automobiles.  Most of them were expected to already be in the market for a new car.  The dealers seem to like it a lot, because whether they sell new or used cars the prices will escalate impressively.  Meanwhile, the smaller local, mom/pop used car dealers are in trouble.  It is estimated (Michael Felderbaum, AP Business Writer) that 3 of every 5 of the cars destroyed by this wasteful program would have ended up for sale on used car lots or at least resold for parts.  And these dealers were struggling before!  The consumers have been holding off trading in their used cars, so there was already a shortage in the market before the removal of half a million good cars occurred.  For those of you who don’t shop for used cars, Keith Wahnn, industry expert, says that about 40 million are sold every year, or 4 times the number of new cars. This excuse of “economic stimulus”, then, is not a legitimate reason.  It is actually ruining the marketplace.

So, let’s consider the benefit to the environment.  What are we destroying?  Not older cars that don’t run well.  To qualify the car must be 25 years old or less, insured for a full year prior to turning it in, and running well.  If this were a program for the environment, why not pay the poor $4,500 as a down payment for one of these 25-year-old or less models?  Why leave a 1977 Ford Galaxy with leaky rings on the road to burn oil and guzzle gas and take off the road a 1998 Ford Explorer?  The environment, if that is the concern, would benefit just as much if the poor were helped out.  In either case a car would quit being driven and a newer car sold.  Except that the LESS WEALTHY would also benefit.  There is also no excuse in prohibiting the salvaging of parts for repair of other cars.  This is criminally wasteful.  I think we can forget about this as an “environmental” program.  If it were, there would be no reason to punish the poor with it.

This is just the point.  What we have here is an evil, ingenious means of social engineering.  And this is why it is so important to deny the guy driving Fred Sanford’s old pickup the opportunity to buy, at a $4,500 discount, a 1990’s model that is more efficient than his old one.  The actual purpose of this plan is to create a permanent class structure of haves and have-not’s.  For what “Cash for Clunkers” will produce in years to come is an irreversible shortage of better pre-owned automobiles.  It is estimated that at this point, “Cash for Clunkers” will at 5 - 10% to the cost of every used car in the future.  As our old cars finally die we, who can’t afford the new ones, will be forced to take the bus or walk, and this will limit our mobility and our options to improve our lives.  Would you be able to get to your job without a car?  Some will not.  It won’t kill us.  It will make our lives that much poorer and more difficult.  Gone will be the car in the parking lot when we shop for groceries - we’ll be waiting for the buss and anticipating walking for blocks with heavy sacks to carry (and they don’t make them like they used to either!).  Gone will be the short trip to the neighboring town, and the night at the movies once in a while, especially in the winter.

We could also live, for example, without laundry machines.  People did once and some still do, especially in places like India, China or most parts of Africa.  But think how your life would be impacted without these things.  You would have to get a stick and a washtub, as they do in the Third World, or spend a lot of time waiting at a Laundromat.  You wouldn’t die, but your life would change - a lot.  If you had to take a bus you would find that you couldn’t get to work if it was not anywhere near the bus route, or the hours were not service hours for the bus.  Then you would walk.  How many hours a week would you lose?  Remember the saying, “Time is life”?  How much of your life would you be losing every year of this?  The “Cash for Clunkers” program in effect, is like taking the ladder of success that we all climb and sawing out the middle runs, leaving those at the bottom cut off from progress, or building a moat between rich and poor, rather than maintaining a continuum of achievement.

Why do we promote class divisions in America?  It is truly an un-American institution.  We have always benefited from a system which provided flexibility in economic levels.  A young immigrant sells fruit from a stand on the sidewalk and eventually opens a chain of fast-food restaurants or grocery stores and makes a million bucks.  Or the scion of a great department store empire squanders the family fortune and ends up on a park bench.  But he can always learn and make a comeback.  What has made America dynamic and successful is this flexibility.  Few countries have this.

So why destroy that?  When we have stratified classes of people and reinforce them with social programs or government influence, we create a climate of class envy and hatred.  The poor fester as they see the injustice of such a scheme.  The rich are often stupid enough, as these people who go after the $4,500 “Cash for Clunkers” benefit, to bask in this.  It has to be fun to spend Friday at the golf course, to dine at the Ritz, to travel, to see Broadway shows, etc.  But when the hope of this is denied in reality to the many - when they are not allowed to move up under their own steam, when they must depend on others to control this, we have a very sick country.

Who profits from this?  In the short run it appears that the already wealthy do, and the favorite car dealerships of the Obama people.  But this is the short run.  Because it is the finish line that is important, right?  We have in place now, a number of people who have demonstrated that they wish to bring about a socialist government, a dictatorship of the proletariat, so to speak.  So the answer to the above question is:  demagogues and dictators.  Whenever there is a perceived gulf between haves and have-nots we find the have-nots in the majority.  It is this group, then, once they have created it, which the social engineer exploits.  They use the pent-up envy of the “upper class” and fan it into hatred in order to destroy the normal social order.  This is the story of one sick-minded totalitarian state after another, from that of Robespierre to those of Lenin and Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, to that of Mao, to . . . well, you know who our totalitarians are today.

The sad iron of all of this is that so many of us have been taught at school and by Depression-era grandparents that the Democrats are always for the “little guy”.  Well, look what they Democrats are doing to the little guy today.  When amendments to the extension of this horrible “Cash for Clunkers” plan were introduced by Republicans - such as donating the cars taken in to poor families or charity or allowing salvage of parts so these poor folks can maintain the cars they have, it was Democrats who voted them down and killed those amendments.  Why?  Was the real reason for “Cash for Clunkers” was to keep the poor as poor as possible?  Think about it.  We now have a permanent loss of half a million serviceable, reasonably well-maintained cars.  The price for every used car will now increase, making it ever more difficult for those who shop in that market.  And we also now have one group - the wealthy - taking unfair advantage of another - the poor - all with the encouragement of the government and with our tax dollars!

Before we all jump on the bandwagon to support this “novel” approach to depriving some and rewarding others, we should pause long enough to consider the consequences and the intent.  If we do and if we love our country we will reject any more of these plans.  Not only can a nation on the brink of economic collapse not afford this foolishness, but we don’t need to spend money to buy social injustice.

By Attorney Robert Hale

AARP has authored a document that they call “Health Action Now! Myth vs Facts” that can be found at: http://aarp.convio.net/site/PageNavigator/Myths_vs_Facts

AARP makes the claim of addressing “Myths” with “Facts”. There isn’t a single reference in AARP’s “Myths vs. Facts” to any section of the ONLY health care bill (HB 3200) being considered by Congress.  How is it possible to contend the assertions made by AARP are myths or facts?  AARP cites nothing to corroborate any assertion they make! They ignore the ONLY legislation that exists!



AARP Claims:

There are special interest groups trying to block progress on health care reform by using myths and scare tactics. Like the notion that health care reform would ration your care, hurt Medicare or be a government takeover. Actually, these are false statements.

Bill Analysis:

• These are not false statements.  They are logical conclusions based on the language of HB 3200.

• Rather than listen to the opinions or conclusions of others- read HB 3200.

• Health care is rationed when funding is limited.  That is how all goods and services are rationed.

• HB 3200 creates an un-elected appointed committee that will specify the required terms and conditions in all health care insurance policies.  Those policies that do not meet these requirements are not “approved”.  Unapproved policies do not meet the requirements of HB 3200 and subject individuals or businesses to the penalties the Bill empowers the IRS to impose on any entity (including individuals) who do not have an approved policy.

• It is not unreasonable to conclude from the mandates of HB 3200 that the Federal Government and the Committees created under HB 3200 will dictate the contents of all health care policies.



AARP Claims:

All of the health care reform plans currently being debated in Congress would ensure that you and your doctor are the ones making decisions about your health.

Bill Analysis:

• There is currently only ONE plan that has been published and is in the process of being considered by congress – it is HB 3200.

• HB 3200 is the only plan which can be evaluated – nothing else.  Everything else is simply rhetoric.  If passed HB 3200 becomes the law – anything not in the bill isn’t law and is not enforceable or actionable. All assertions or comments not found in the bill are meaningless.

• Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi pushed to have HB 3200 passed by the House and sent to the Senate within 2 ½ weeks of the time it was first published and made public.

• NO public hearings were or are scheduled for public input into any proposal, let alone HB 3200.



AARP Claims:

The majority of working Americans will continue to receive their health care through their employer.

Bill Analysis:

• This is absolutely accurate.  This is because under HB 3200 employers are required to pay 60% of the cost of a family plan and 72.5% of a single plan.  Unless it is provided through the employer there would be no means of enforcing payment.

• Employers are, under HB 3200, required to offer only plans approved by a yet to be appointed Federal Committee.

• The requirements of the plans that must be provided have not yet been written.

• Under HB 3200 employers will be penalized if they do not offer plans meeting all the requirements of this un-elected committee.

• Neither employers nor employees are permitted to determine what their plan covers or doesn’t cover.  Those decisions are left exclusively under control of an un-elected Federal Committee.



AARP Claims:

In addition, health care reform will strengthen Medicare by eliminating billions of dollars in waste while lowering prescription drug prices.

Bill Analysis:

• The ‘billions of dollars in waste’ have not been identified; they are only hoped for savings.

• There is nothing in HB 3200 showing where “waste” will be eliminated.

• Medicare is the Federal medical program that has been exclusively run by the federal government.  There is NO need to enact any legislation to permit the Federal Government to take steps to eliminate “waste” in a program that it runs and has since its inception.

• Why hasn’t the federal government stopped this waste?  What are they waiting for?

• What is in HB 3200 that will give Medicare the tools to lower prescription drug prices that it doesn’t currently have?

• We were unable to find anything in HB 3200 that would do this.



AARP Claims:

Throughout the debate on how to fix what’s broken about our health care system, AARP pledges to help you cut through the noise and find the facts about what health care reform means for you and your family.

Bill Analysis:

• What debate?

• To date there has been NO discussion of why health care costs have soared over the last 40 years.

• We are unaware of any forum that has or does exist for the purposes of discussing and/or debating the issues surrounding health care in the United States.

• We have been unable to find any place – in Congress or otherwise – where there are discussions of: o Tort reform (which by some studies conclude are responsible for almost 80% of the increases in health care costs after inflation is taken into account).  o Costs and time delays imposed by the Federal Drug Administration on pharmaceutical companies trying to bring new drugs and medical devices to the market.  o Problems with third-party payers who are unable to effectively oversee the legitimacy of medical bills.

o The number of individuals able to enter medical schools because of lack of places for those qualified and wishing to enter.

o Why Medicade and Medicare payments for services are below the cost of hospitals and doctors providing services.

o Why employers are to be held responsible for paying the majority of an individual’s health care costs.  Why shouldn’t they be responsible for paying for an employee’s food, shelter, clothing, transportation, entertainment?

• None of the above issues are addressed in HB 3200.  HB 3200 is the only piece of legislation that has been introduced.  The question that needs to be asked is how does HB 3200 address the above issues?  If it doesn’t how does it propose to”fix what’s broken about our health care system”?



AARP Claims:

When we see special interests using scare tactics, we’ll make sure you’re given the facts so you can make informed decisions about health care reform. 

Bill Analysis:

• It is incumbent upon those claiming “special interests” are doing anything – either good or bad to identify the “special interests” by name.

• It is incumbent that those claiming information is inaccurate and a “scare tactic” to articulate the specific statement and point to the specific language in HB 3200 the either confirms or denies the claim.

• What “decisions” are the public (i.e. individual citizens) being asked to make regarding HB 3200?

• The public is not being provided an opportunity to make any decisions, let alone provide any input on HB 3200.

• The only health care bill before Congress is HB 3200.  The public was given NO information regarding this piece of legislation prior to July 14, 2009 when it was first published.

• The sponsors of HB 3200 sought to have it passed by Congress prior to their August recess.  That did not happen.  Had the sponsors achieved their original goal there would have been NO public input of any kind.  In short, without input there are no meaningful decisions we can make. The law would have been passed and we would have to live under it.



  AARP Claims:

The following are some of the most common myths being spread about health care reform and the facts that prove them wrong –

Myth: Health care reform is socialized medicine.

Fact: Health care reform will preserve the employer-based health care system, meaning an estimated 200 million Americans will continue to get their coverage through their employers.

Bill Analysis:

• It is a fact that some Americans will continue to get their coverage through their employers.

• However, what they get will be dramatically different than what they have.

• How it will be different can be seen in Title I of HB 3200.

• Exactly how it will be different is unknown because the mandates have yet to be written.

• A Committee of un-elected individuals will write them.

• HB 3200 specifies that ALL health care plans meet the requirements set out by a yet to be appointed Committee.

• HB 3200 states all current employer provided plans will remain approved for 12 months after the bill becomes law.  Provided there are no changes in the terms or conditions of the plans.

• If there are any changes in the terms and/or conditions the plans must comply with the requirements developed by the Committee.



AARP Claims:

Fact: For people buying coverage for themselves, there would be a range of private health plans to choose from.

Bill Analysis:

• Every plan that will be available must meet the mandates of a committee yet to be appointed and yet to define the specifics of what the plan must contain.

• No individual will be permitted to negotiate a plan that does not meet the requirements set out by the Committee.

• For anyone who has a plan not approved by the Committee or chooses to not have a plan will be penalized.

• The IRS will enforce the penalty.



AARP Claims:

Also, the so-called “public plan” option would seek to give American consumers another choice if they can’t find affordable, quality coverage in the private insurance market. The goal of the “public plan” is to give consumers the best value for their money and force greater competition among insurance plans for our business.

Bill Analysis:

• HB 3200 does not define either “affordable” or “quality”.

• The “public plan” is a heavily subsidized plan.

• The consequence of this subsidized plan will be to either:

o Drive private plan providers out of the market because they cannot compete with the government subsidized plan;

o Drive individuals to purchase the “public plan” because of the attractive subsidy thus increasing the cost to taxpayers.

• HB 3200 does not provide for health care insurance.  HB 3200 requires companies to provide payment of selected health care services regardless of risk, pre-existing conditions, age , life-style or gender.  HB 3200 prohibits private providers from pricing their products based on risks, lifestyle or behavior.

• HB 3200 prohibits risk management.

• HB 3200 requires plans limit deductibles regardless of what the policyholder wishes.

• HB 3200 prohibits individuals or employers from negotiating terms and conditions including deductibles, co-pays or any other terms with a plan provider.



AARP Claims:

Fact: Every proposal that Congress is considering would allow people to choose their own doctors and hospitals.

Bill Analysis:

• At best this is misleading.

• Medicare policyholders do not have this option.  Many doctors do not accept Medicare policyholders.

• Under HB 3200 the majority of those who currently have no health care insurance will likely end up with a Medicare type plan i.e. the “public plan”.

• Many doctors will not accept either Medicade or Medicare patients.  A close reading of HB 3200 leads the reader to conclude the “public option” will mirror the Medicare program.

• Those who opt for the “affordable and quality public plan” will most likely face the same dilemma those with Medicade and Medicare now fact – doctors that will not take them.

• No professional will work for less than the cost to provide the services being provided. Nothing in HB 3200 provided for funding that will guarantee to meet the cost to providers.

• Many governors, after reading HB 3200, have stated that the consequence of enactment of this will be the closing of hospitals in their states.  These concerns are ignored in HB 3200.



AARP Claims:

Bottom Line: Health care reform isn’t about a government takeover. It’s about guaranteeing all Americans a choice of health care plans they can afford. 

Bill Analysis:

• Under HB 3200 employers will be required to either provide a health care program covering mandatory services or pay an 8% penalty.

• HB 3200 directs the IRS to enforce compliance and collection of penalties.

• HB 3200 will add an additional 50,000,000 people to the system.  This is what “universal health care” means.  Everyone will be covered.

• HB 3200 proposes to fund 1/3rd of the cost through “squeezing out waste”.  The Federal government unilaterally runs Medicare, which, according to the CBO loses billions each year due to fraud and waste.  If government cannot fix its own program and eliminate waste now does HB 3200 change that?  It doesn’t.

• H 3200 proposes to fund another 1/3rd through a surcharge tax on the wealthiest 1.5% of Americans.  The assumption this 1.5% of Americans will continue to fund this program – i.e. fund the first pure socialist program in our history – may well prove elusive at best.

• The remaining 1/3rd is to be funded by employers.

• If health care plans are currently unaffordable and an additional 50,000,000 people are going to be added to a health care system how will that lower costs?  Someone has to pay.  It will either be the user or the taxpayer.  There is no free lunch.



AARP Claims:

Myth: Health care reform means rationed care.

Fact: None of the health reform proposals being considered would stand between individuals and their doctors or prevent any American from choosing the best possible care.

Bill Analysis:

• There is only ONE “health reform” proposal – that is HB 3200.  There are no others, none!

• No plans or proposals have been published nor is there any we can look at to see what they may propose.  The only proposal that is meaningful for discussion and consideration is HB 3200.

• 60% of the pages in HB 3200 address Medicare and Medicaid (pages 205 – 819 of 1,018).  The reality of HB 3200 – if enacted will be to discourage individuals from seeking a profession in the health care industry.

• Two things will stand between individuals and their doctors under HB 3200:

o A shortage of doctors.  Adding 50,000,000 more people to the system without adding additional doctors will limit access to all doctors.  The consequence is having to wait or not being able to see the doctor of one’s choice.  While some refuse to call this “rationing”, it is.

o The Public Option Plan will mirror Medicare.  Medicare limits what doctors are paid.  This limits who doctors will see.  Again, while some refuse to call this “rationing” it is.



AARP Claims:

Fact: Health care reform will NOT give the government the power to make life or death decisions for anyone regardless of their age. Those decisions will be made by an individual, their doctor and their family. 

Bill Analysis:

• This remains to be seen.  We do know that in both Massachusetts and Oregon medications and medical procedures as well as timely access to doctors under their public system is occurring.

• We also know the same happens in the both the Canadian and British systems.

• HB 3200 mirrors these systems.

• To believe there will be no limitations – i.e. rationing, s to ignore reality and history.

• HB 3200 places all plan requirements in the hands of the Federal government.  While some argue this will not impact “life or death decisions for anyone regardless of their age” that has not been the experience of government controlled plans either in states that have them or in countries that have such controlled plans.

• The problem is that individuals, doctors and families will have fewer options for care, procedures, timing of procedures and cost under HB 3200 than they currently have.  This will directly impact the decisions that can be made.

• Currently it those without insurance have limited choices.  Those with or without insurance have the choice of anything they can afford.  HB 3200 will limit the choices for everyone regardless of whether or not they wish to pay for care with their own funds.



AARP Claims:

Fact: Health care reform will help ensure doctors are paid fairly so they will continue to treat Medicare patients.

Bill Analysis:

• Currently the federal government has total control over Medicare and Medicaid.  We know many doctors refuse Medicare and Medicaid patients because they are not paid fairly.

• There is nothing in HB 3200 that provides for higher payments to doctors.

• The opposite appears to be the case.  HB 3200 will result in adding up to 50 million more to the care rolls while decreasing funding by more than $300 billion over ten years. 



AARP Claims:

Bottom Line: Health reform isn’t about rationing; it’s about giving people the peace of mind of knowing that they will be able to keep their doctors and that they will always have a choice of affordable health plans.

AARP Claims:

• HB 3200 is what Congress is proposing to “reform health care”.

• HB 3200 will add approximately 50,000,000 more people to health care plans.

• HB 3200 requires caps how much policyholders pay in out-of-pocket medical expenses (that is requires providers to pay more than they currently do).

• HB 3200 requires plan providers to fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests aimed at helping prevent illness, such as mammograms and eye and foot exams for diabetics.

• Nowhere does HB 3200 define “affordable health plans”.

• If plans are going to cover more people and pay for greater costs who is going to fund them?

• Someone has to pay.  The claim that more people can get more services and costs will either stay the same or go down seems unreasonable and unattainable.

• If, as the sponsors of HB 3200 claim, more coverage at lower costs will be achieved through elimination of waste why hasn’t that been done already?



AARP Claims:

Myth: Health care reform will hurt Medicare.

Fact: None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services. 

Bill Analysis:

• There is only one health care reform proposal - HB 3200.

• HB 3200 will significantly increase the cost to employers and a select number of Americans.

• Nowhere in HB 3200 is there language that Medicare benefits would not be decreased.



AARP Claims:

Fact: Health care reform will lower prescription drug costs for people in the Medicare Part D coverage gap or “doughnut hole” so they can get better afford the drugs they need.

Bill Analysis:

• This is not certain; we can hope it will be true.

• There is nothing in HB 3200 that supports or guarantees their claim there will be lower prescription drug costs for people in the Medicare Part D program.

• Any and all decreases, if there are any, will have to be paid for by someone.  Either it will be by the insured or through taxes on the rest of us.

• Sponsors of HB 3200 claim that they will negotiate better prescription drug prices for Medicare policyholders.  If this is the case why isn’t it being done now?  HB 3200 provides nothing that would enhance the federal government’s authority or ability to do so at this time.



AARP Claims:

Fact: Health care reform will protect seniors’ access to their doctors and reduce the cost of preventive services so patients stay healthier. 

Bill Analysis:

• HB 3200 has no language that “will protect seniors’ access to their doctors”.

• HB 3200 does provide that someone other than the senior will pay for “preventative services”.  However, this does not mean there will be a reduction in health care costs.  It only means the costs will be shifted to other taxpayers.

• As an operator of Retirement/Assisted living facilities and the son of elderly parents I can personally affirm seniors are not in control of the majority of medical needs they confront.

• Prevention will not stop strokes, weak bones, unsteadiness and the myriad other ailments that are the result of natural aging.

• End of life medical needs consume 90% of a person’s lifetime health care expenses.

• HB 3200 will increase Medicare patient numbers and reduce funding by more than $300 billion over ten years.

• While no one wants to acknowledge it – the only way to reduce the cost of health care to senior citizens is the accelerate “end of live” timing.

• The claim that “preventative services” will keep seniors healthier, while marginally true, does not address the more important question of “end of life” medical costs.  These costs are not a function of a healthier or less healthy lifestyle but a question of aging.  While it would be nice if we could eliminate the medical consequences of aging it can only be done by accelerating end of life timing.

• Sponsors of HB 3200 claim this bill will not permit such considerations to occur or be encouraged by HB 3200.



AARP Claims:

Fact: Health care reform will reduce costly, preventable hospital readmissions, saving patients and Medicare money.

Bill Analysis:

• There is nothing in HB 3200 that addresses reduction of “costly, preventable hospital readmissions”.

• The only way that “readmissions” could be reduced would be for denial.  Sponsors of HB 3200 have emphatically stated that HB 3200 will not do so. 



AARP Claims:

Fact: Rather than weaken Medicare, health care reform will strengthen the financial status of the Medicare program. 

Bill Analysis:

• HB 3200 has no language that supports this claim.

• HB 3200 calls for reduced funding of Medicare by more than $300 billion while demographics show that the number of Medicare recipients will dramatically increase over the same period.

• HB 3200 does not address any of the systemic causes of the increases in health care costs over the last 20 years. Unless the systemic problems that push health care cost up are addressed the financial strength of Medicare will continue to be weakened.



AARP Claims:

Bottom Line: For people in Medicare, health care reform is about lowering prescription drug costs for people in the “doughnut hole”, keeping the doctor of your choice, improving the quality of care, and eliminating billions in waste that is causing poor care and medical errors.

Bill Analysis:

• Health care reform should be about lowering prescription costs, keeping doctors of one’s choice, improving quality of care and elimination of waste.  HB 3200 does none of these things.

• The assertion that “poor care and medical errors” are caused by waste strains the imagination.  This comment illustrates one of the difficulties in discussing issues surrounding medical costs.

• Waste is a problem.  Poor care is a problem.  Medical errors may be a problem although malpractice suits seem to be more of a problem in the steep increase in medical costs.  HB 3200 addresses none of these issues. 



AARP Claims:

Myth: Health care reform is too expensive – we can’t afford it.

AARP Claims:

Fact: The President and Congress have committed to producing legislation that will be paid for so it won’t saddle our children and grandchildren with debt.

Bill Analysis:

• The Congressional Budget Office does not agree.

• The CBO has said HB 3200 will result in several hundred billion in deficit, i.e. debt spending.

• HB 3200 will “saddle” employers and a very small percent of taxpayers (the wealthiest 1.5%) with huge costs. The question is will this impact us, our children or our grandchildren? No one is discussing this impact.  It is one that should be seriously considered – it will have significant impacts.

• HB 3200 will result in forcing employers to reduce their workforce so they can afford to fund the health care policies mandated under the bill or offer no plan, pay the 8% penalty and then have their employees join the “public plan”.  Increasing the number of people on the “public plan” will increase costs to taxpayers.  These costs will either result in higher taxes now or greater debt.  The later will fall on our children and grandchildren.  The former on us now.

• In the alternative employers can pay the costs of a more expensive health care mandate and have less income (profit) with which to grow and expand.  In this case it will result in reduced job creation.

• It may be wishful thinking to believe that the wealthiest Americans will continue to create wealth when they are penalized for doing so.  Our own tax history shows they have not.



AARP Claims:

Fact: If we do nothing to fix health care, families with Medicare or employer-based health coverage will likely see their premiums nearly double again in the next seven years.

Bill Analysis:

• HB 3200 does nothing to address any of the systemic problems facing our medical system.

• HB 3200 does nothing to fix the systemic problems with health care and thus cannot “fix health care”.

• Instead of addressing the problems causing the increasing costs of health care HB 3200 throws employers’ and wealthy American’s money at the problem without doing anything to address the causes of the problem.  HB 3200 fixes nothing.

• History and the experience of Massachusetts, Oregon, Canada and Britain with government controlled and mandated health care clearly demonstrate that does not improve care, coverage, availability or the number of professionals entering the profession.

• HB 3200 has no language and no proposed programs to reduce health care costs or control them.

• HB 3200 has language that increases the number of persons that must be covered by health plans; that increases the services these plans must fund and that decreases what policy holders will be permitted to pay.

• HB 3200 mandates 50,000,000 more people be covered by health care policies, policies pay for more services and those policy holders pay lower co-payments.

• The sponsors of HB 3200 have not explained nor does the bill outline how this will happen and at the same time health care costs will be reduced.



AARP Claims:

Fact: If we do nothing to fix health care, the share of your income spent on health care will nearly double in the next seven years. 

Bill Analysis:

• HB 3200 has no language that addresses “fixing health care”.

• HB 3200, however, mandates universal coverage and forces employers to pay for medical costs.

• HB 3200 does not address litigation issues, FDA imposed costs and delays in bringing medications and medical devices into the market, separating those receiving medical services from the billing of those services.

• The above issues are the causes of the increase in health care costs yet HB 3200 addresses none of them.

• It is important to address and try to fix the problems in our health care system.  These problems are not quality of health care services, or options we currently have available.  They are issues not addressed by HB 3200. 



AARP Claims:

Bottom Line: When one in three Americans say someone in their family skipped pills, postponed or cut back on needed medical care due to the cost; when countless bankruptcies are related to medical expenses; when the number of uninsured approaches 50 million; when government spending on health programs rises so rapidly that it jeopardizes other priorities; and when employers struggle to pay for the costs of health care, the fact is, we can’t afford not to fix health care.

Bill Analysis:

• Who could disagree with this?

• Unfortunately HB 3200 is the only proposal currently being promoted as the way to “fix health care”.

• HB 3200 addresses none of the issues outlined above except mandate “universal” coverage.

• HB 3200 addresses none of the systemic problems that are driving the increase in health care costs.

• HB 3200 does nothing to help employers struggling with health care costs.  Instead HB 3200 forces employers to spend more on health care costs.

• HB 3200 assumes that forcing employers to spend more on health care costs will take the burden off both the government and employees.

• The sponsors of HB 3200 do not explain or address where employers will find the money to pay the costs imposed on them by HB 3200.

• Sponsors of HB 3200 realize they cannot increase taxes on the general population as much as would be necessary to subsidize the health care coverage they wish to mandate.

• Sponsors of HB 3200 believe employees should not be required to fund the cost of their health care and propose - through HB 3200 to impose these cost on employers.

• The real bottom line is HB 3200 cannot fix health care it can and will only make the problem worse not better.

• The truth is, medical costs are not unreasonable and beyond the cost of the majority of Americans.

• To totally redesign and place the federal government in charge of our entire health care system using the IRS to enforce the mandates of this system) is irresponsible, unnecessary, misguided and does not address a single one of the systemic issues responsible for the increases in health care costs.”



AARP Claims:

Myth: Health care reform means the government can make life-and-death decisions for you.

Fact: Health care reform will NOT give the government the power to make life-and-death decisions for anyone regardless of their age. Those decisions will be made by individuals, their doctor and their family.

Bill Analysis:

• “See below.”



AARP Claims:

Fact: No one, including the government or your insurance company, will be given power to make life-and-death decisions for you.

Bill Analysis:

• HB 3200 has no language that supports this claim.  On the contrary there is language that raises serious concerns the opposite may well be the case.

• HB 3200 is only an outline.  The details of the “system” that HB 3200 will authorize have not been written.  Until the details are written claims that there will be no “rationing” are just that claims.

• Yet, HB 3200 provides for and looks frighteningly like the government run systems found in Massachusetts, Oregon, Canada and Britain.  They have medical systems that mirror what HB 3200 outlines.  It is unrealistic to assume we will not see the same outcome if HB 3200 becomes the model for America’s future health care system.



AARP Claims:

Bottom Line: Health care reform isn’t about putting the government in charge of difficult end of life decisions. It’s about giving individuals and families the option to talk with their doctors in advance about difficult choices every family faces when loved ones near the end of their lives.

Bill Analysis:

• HB 3200 is not reform nor is it aimed at fixing the systemic problems that are responsible for the increasing costs of medical care in the U.S.

• HB 3200 puts all health care insurance providers into the business of overseeing payment of medical costs as directed by an as yet unnamed, un-elected committee.

• We have no idea what the details of these programs will be they have not been written and if they have they have not been made public.

• HB 3200 does direct an appointed and un-elected committee to develop “health care strategies for America” – after the HB 3200 is passed.

• We have no idea what these “strategies” will be, how they will be implemented or how they will impact the future of health care in America.  This should concern every American.

Pointed out by Brian at the Radio Equalizer Ed Schultz is into some pretty weird theories…

SCHULTZ:

It’s almost as if every one of these town hall meetings is turning into “The Jerry Springer Show”. And there are many Americans right now who are starting to fear for the safety of the president of the United States. All over health reform. Folks, these people are psycho, that’s what they are.

And then:

Sometimes I think they want Obama to get shot. I do! I really think that there are conservative broadcasters in this country who would love to see Obama taken out. They *fear* socialism, they fear Marxism. They fear that the United States of America won’t be the United States of America anymore.

This is, apparently, the type of craziness that is required to keep you at the top of the lib-talk pile.

This type of talk and the accusations of racism seem to be the only tools the liberals have to use to try and salvage the ObamaScare agenda. Very sad. Becoming very dangerous.

The Fargo Forum editorial writer Jack Zaleski comes out this morning (August 12, 2009) as a possible shill for Obama’s Care (ObamaScare). He must have gotten the talking points from Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid and Barack Hussein Obama concerning the new strategy to continue shoving “health care reform” down the throats of Americans. The emerging new strategy appears to be not to talk about what is actually in H.R. 3200, but to pick one single aspect of the health care debate and attack the validity of all of those opposing this gigantic grab for your liberty, then claim that the opposition comes from some disreputable faction, next claim that not only are those in opposition stupid, mistaken, and liars, and ignore the duplicity of the promoters of this “change”, last, ignore the massive duplicity of the proponants. This is typical Jack Zaleski work. Here is how the technique is executed in The Forum today:

Zaleski: “The low quality of the debate has muddled the truth. Maybe that’s the purpose of intellectual superstars such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.”

Sarah Palin is stupid. Zaleski tees off with left’s wholly unsubstantiated assertion that a woman who ran the state of Alaska by taking on and defeating the entrenched corruption within her own state’s party and won against the money and power of the establishment is mentally deficient! As Palin was extremely popular in Alaska as Governor, does Zaleski believe that the majority of Alaskans are mentally deficient as well?

Zaleski: “The darling of the increasingly marginalized right wing of the Republican Party said the health care bill that emerged from the U.S. House includes a provision that, in effect, is euthanasia for granny and gramps. Not true, and had Palin and her ilk read the section she would know it’s not true. More disturbing, if they read the provision and are misrepresenting the bill, they are little more than liars and fear mongers.”

All objective indications are that the conservative wing of the Republican Party is in ascendency. According to the July 6, 2009 poll, Gallup found that those likely voters that consider themselves “conservative” is at 40% and growing, and in fact has increased 3% since 2008, and nearly 4 of 10 say that they have become more conservative. Somehow Jack Zaleski knows otherwise, claiming “increasingly marginalized right wing”. So what is his source for such a claim? Fact, ignorance, rhetoric or dishonesty?

Try to find anyplace where Sarah Palin has said anything like “in effect, is euthanasia for granny and gramps.” Apparently Jack Zaleski does not know that Palin made twitter comments that can easily be found (Jack: it is called Google), where what she actually said was quoted from the Sydney Morning Herald:

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society’, whether they are worthy of health care,” the former Republican vice-presidential candidate wrote.

“Such a system is downright evil,” Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters. She encouraged her supporters to be engaged in the debate.

Jack Zaleski can not produce any evidence that Palin ever claimed “euthanasia for granny and gramps”. So is his claim fact, ignorance, rhetoric or dishonesty?

Jack Zaleski then goes on to use the distinctly pejorative term “Palin and her ilk” (Webster on “ilk”: to indicate disapproval when applied to people) to infer dishonesty and that had they read the bill that they would know better. Well, on pages 424-430 of H.R. 3200 is the exact language concerning end of life “consultation”.  Do not take mine, nor Jack Zaleski’s word. Read these six pages and ask yourself what exactly does this say? How often do you see the words shall and will? Is this a suggestion or a command? Why is this in a law? Did Jack Zaleski read the bill? Does Jack Zaleski know in what manner the bill has legal force? If he is claiming that “Palin and her ilk” have not read the bill and he has not, though he claims to know what the bill says, who then, is lying? What if Jack Zaleski “read the provision and are misrepresenting the bill, they are little more than liars and fear mongers.”? Who is fear mongering?

Jack Zaleski is apparently unaware or neglects to mention that mistrust of H.R. 3200 is well founded based on FACTS! It turns out that one of the top health care advisors to President Obama is White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Dr. Ezekial Emanuel, a bioethisist who has a paper trail (Jack, try Google). Representative Newt Gingrich explains Dr. Emanuel’s viewpoint in practice as it is done in England and quotes from Dr. Emanuel’s writings in the article “Trust the Government”:

The system advocated by Dr. Emanuel would allocate health care based on the government’s perception of the societal worth of the patients.  Accordingly, the very young and the very old would receive less care since the former have received less societal investment and the latter have less left to contribute. “Forstall[ing] the Concern that Disproportionate Amounts of Resources Will be Directed to Young People with Poor Prognosis”

“The Complete Lives System” would also consider the prognosis of the individual.

Quoting Dr. Emanuel:  “A young person with a poor prognosis has had few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life.  Considering prognosis forestalls the concern that disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognosis.”

When fully implemented, Dr. Emanuel’s system, in his words, “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

“Chances that are attenuated” is a nice way of saying the young and the old are considered less worthy of health care and, under this system, will get less.

Once Government Becomes the Provider of Health Care, Personal Decisions Become Public Decisions

The point is not that a health care rationing system like the one favored by Dr. Emmanuel will be implemented in the United States tomorrow.

The point is that, as in the British system, once government becomes the single payer or even the main payer of health care, what were once intensely personal decisions become public decisions.  And as costs rise, government will look for ways to contain them.

The inevitable result of this pressure to control costs will be rationing, whether it occurs during this administration or the next.  At some point, the government will be forced to deny care to those who don’t meet the latest “quality-adjusted life years” cost-benefit analysis.

So the decision on what treatment to pursue that once would have been made by you and your doctor is now made for you by a bureaucrat using a formula—a formula to literally determine if your life is worth saving.

Also telling is that Jack Zaleski neglects to mention that it was members of the SEIU union who beat-up an opponent of health care reform in St. Louis, Missouri. It was SEIU members who where let in the side doors to stack audiences at several Democrat controlled “Town Hall” events and then manned the doors to threaten and deny access to those who came to oppose what is being proposed in H.R. 3200.

Perhaps most telling is Jack Zaleski’s selective indignation. Many, many Americans simply trust the Democrats and Obama less and less because they have almost continuously lies. Forbes magazine in the article, “Obama’s Top Five Health Care Lies” article of July 1, 2009:

Lie One: No one will be compelled to buy coverage.

Lie Two: No new taxes on employer benefits.

Lie Three: Government can control rising health care costs better than the private sector.

Lie Four: A public plan won’t be a Trojan horse for a single-payer monopoly.

Lie Five: Patients don’t have to fear rationing.

Then there are the serial prevarications of President Obama beginning with the August 12, 2009 article “Top 10 bald-faced lies from Obama’s staged health care “town hall”’ article from Examiner.com:

10) “The irony is that actually one of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican—then House member, now senator, named Johnny Isakson from Georgia—who very sensibly thought this is something that would expand people’s options.” Isakson came out immediately after this and emphatically condemned this outrageously false claim.

9) “AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, okay?” The AARP quickly corrected this misinformation: “Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”

8) “You will not be waiting in any lines.” All the evidence says otherwise.

7) “46 million Americans don’t have health insurance coverage today.” This is an obscenely dishonest “calculation.”

6) “I’m not promoting a single-payer plan.” Obama admitted that such a plan is exactly his goal here. And here is a non-partisan study confirming that ObamaCare will indeed destroy free market health care, leaving us with no other options but government-run care.

5) “Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” The Congressional Budget Office estimated that 10 million workers would be forced out of their employer-based coverage and into government health care by this bill.

4) “So the intention…was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready, on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything…And somehow it’s gotten spun into this idea of ‘death panels.’”

House Republicans, patient advocates, and conservative publications have repeatedly highlighted the specific parts of the bill that would in fact force seniors into counseling sessions that pressure them to stop burdening the system.

Obama’s own Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has openly admitted that Obama’s “vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely ‘lipstick’ cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change.” The real savings come from rationing care. ObamaCare will have panels modeled after Britain’s system, which cuts costs by denying care to the sick and elderly.

3) “We’re not talking about cutting Medicare benefits.” Obama admitted that this was how his health care scam would be funded. He has proposed $313 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to pay for this.

2) “This is not about putting government in charge of your health insurance.” Yeah, how could passing a needless, blatantly unconstitutional law to address a non-existent crisis with endless government rules and regulations on every aspect of health care possibly be misconstrued as “putting government in charge?”

1) “I won’t sign a bill that adds to the deficit or the national debt.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, the current legislation being promoted and defended by Barack “No Pork in This Bill” Obama will cost an absolute fortune and increase, rather than decrease, health care costs…making this claim completely absurd.

And last but not least Obama’s real intent for Americans:



June 30, 2003, speaking to an AFL-CIO Civil, Women’s, and Human Rights Conference, Obama said:

“I happen to be a proponent of single payer universal health care plans. . . A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

March 24, 2007, SEIU Health Care Forum Obama says:

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potnentially some transition process. I can envision a decade out or 15 years out or 20 years out.”

August 19, 2008 from Wall Street Journal article, Obama is quoted”

“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.”

June 15, 2009, speaking to the American Medical Association:

“The public option is not your enemy, it is your friend.”

August 11, 2009, Portsmouth, New Hampshire Obama said:

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter, because, frankly, we historically have had a employer-based system in this country, with private insurers, and for us to transition to a system like that, I believe would be too disruptive.”

This is just a short summary of the lies that are coming from President Obama. He lies with impunity because he knows that he can count on his propagandists (Jack Z?) to ignore his lies and run interference by claiming that the opponents of the government take over of health care is anything else but what it is. The evidence seems unequivocal. Jack Zaleski: Go on the internet to Google. Type in “democrat health care lies”, or “Obama health care lies”. The evidence is much more succinct and linear than the construction of Jack Zaleski that Sarah Palin and her “ilk” are lying.

Jack Zaleski ends his article with:

“Surely there is more than enough in the several health care reform bills to criticize, to reject, to help scuttle. No one should embrace reform simply because it is called reform. But honest, informative and productive debate about a subject vital to every American family cannot proceed when allegedly responsible political leaders and their lap-dog mouthpieces peddle lies.”

It is my didactic technique to pose questions and allow readers to come to their own conclusions. Rarely, am I ever moved to make specific statements about the work of other authors engaged in the arena of public debate. I will depart from that methodology to make this statement:

Jack Zaleski is either ignorant of the facts, technically unable to investigate the validity of his assertions, is a propagandist, and/or is a liar.

Based on the evidence at least one or more of these claims by me must be true. Do we have the tragic case of a liar claiming the dishonesty of others?

One thing that Jack Zaleski was correct about was that we cannot proceed when “lap-dog mouthpieces peddle lies”. Jack, which is worse, your bark or your bite?

Words come easy, but only actions can give substance to good intentions.

So it is with politicians on summer break who pander with smooth words to their constituents. Woe to the citizens beguiled by the words of a silver tongued fox who fall prey to hollow rhetoric. They will live with the A visit back home by politicians should be more than a faux listening tour. If they have ears, let them hear and let their actions speak louder than words. One reason congress has such a low overall confidence rating is a lack of credible action camouflaged by elegant words. One gets the vague impression that politicians are out to protect their jobs by fooling the voters. Following on the heels of the US House-passed cap and trade legislation, the public is understandably suspicious and uneasy with what they read in the proposed health care legislation to be voted on in September. The US House of Representatives made public their health care plan H.R. 3200 known as “America’s Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009.” Although the US Senate has proposed legislation (S. 4 and S.391), the bills have not been made public. They are, however, being discussed in committee and by President Obama at White House meetings with select senators. This is what the public is upset about. The following citations are taken from H.R. 3200 which members of congress are not addressing. Nor are the senate health care bills available for viewing. P. 16: If a person has health insurance at the time the bill becomes law, any change in their policy will require replacement by a similar insurance plan. If such a plan is not available, the government option must be used. Pp. 29-30: These pages acknowledge the rationing of government health care. The Health Benefits Advisory Committee will decide upon treatments and benefits. There is no appeals provision. Pp. 41-42: The president, with the advice and consent of the senate, will appoint a Health Choices Commissioner who will decide health benefits. No personal choice is given. Pp. 50-51: Non-citizens, illegal or otherwise, will receive free health care. Pp. 58-59: The government will have real-time access to individual financial accounts to determine an individual’s financial responsibility and enable electronic fund transfers via your beneficiary health card. P. 124: No entity can sue the government for government price-fixing. Nor is there any judicial review permitted against the government monopoly. P. 127: The government will set doctors’ wages. P. 149: An employer with a payroll greater than $400k which does not offer the public option must pay an 8% penalty on the cumulative salary of all employees. P. 167: Any person who does not have adequate health care by the government standards will be taxed 2.5% of their income. P. 170: Non-resident aliens are exempt from individual taxes. American citizens will underwrite their costs. Pp. 194-195: Employees of the health care bureaucracy will have access to citizens financial and personal records. P. 139: Doctors will be paid the same regardless of specialty. P. 317: Hospitals may not expand without government approval. P. 425: Government requires end-of-life counseling. P. 426: Government requires people on Medicare to receive periodic counseling on advanced directives and end-of-life services and support. P. 429: Advanced care planning consultation will be used to dictate treatment as a person’s health deteriorates. These citations are but a small sampling. The bill is rife with more of the same, more than a few amendments can fix. H.R. 3200 is best viewed at the Government Printing Office website in .pdf format via the Library of Congress’s THOMAS website. Congressmen aren’t even trying to sell the provisions of H.R. 3200 to their constituents. They remain mum. Either it’s too difficult to convince constituents, or legislators haven’t read the bill. Thanks to modern technology and the internet, many people have read the bill and know more about H.R. 3200 than their legislators. And, the people don’t like what they see. Surely, any congressman or senator who actually reads the bill would not accept its provisions. If they do vote for this proposed health care legislation in its present form, many folks may not return the favor in 2010 and 2012. Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI… No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20th. Under the stimulus bill, there’s a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful (“QUESTION AUTHORITY”), you can trade them in for a new “CELEBRATE CONFORMITY” sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you.

“The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!” warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: They’ve been directed to show up at “thousands of events”, told to “organize”, “knock on doors” …

No, wait. My mistake. That’s the email I got from Mitch Stewart, Director of “Organizing for America” at BarackObama.com. But that’s the good kind of “organizing”. Obama’s a community organizer. We’re the community. He organizes us. What part of that don’t you get?

When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell.  Not that these extremists showing up at town hall meetings are real members of the “community”. Have you noticed how tailored they are? Dissent is now the hautest form of couturism. Senator Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama’s health-care proposals as too “well-dressed” to be genuine. Only the Emperor has new clothes. Everyone knows that.

Thankfully, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has seen through the “manufactured anger” of “the Brooks Brothers brigade”.  Did he announce this in a crumpled suit? He’s a Press Secretary who won’t press. Apparently, the health care debate now has a dress code. Soon you won’t be able to get in unless you’re wearing Barack Obama mom-jeans, manufactured at a converted GM plant by an assembly line of retrained insurance salesmen. Any day now, Hollywood will greenlight a new movie in which an insane Sarah Palin figure picks out her outfit for spreading disinformation ,“The Lyin’, The Witch And The Wardrobe”.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, added her own distinctive wrinkle to the Brooks Brothers menswear. She disdained the anti-Obamacare protests as fake grassroots. “I think they’re AstroTurf,” she declared. “They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.”

Is this one of those Chinese Whispers things? Obama told Gibbs to tell Boxer to tell Reid, and by the time it reached Pelosi, it came out as uniforms night: Brooks Brothers. Mel Brooks. Springtime for Hitler. Swastikas. Or is the Speaker right to sound the alarm about this army of goosestepping dandies? A veritable Garbstapo jackbooting down the Interstate like it’s a catwalk in Milan.

Fortunately, this president doesn’t fold like a Robert Gibbs suit. He won’t give in to the attire pressure. So, on Monday, the official White House website drew attention to the alarming amount of “disinformation about health insurance reform”. “These rumors often travel just below the surface,” warned Macon Phillips, Chief Commissar of the Hopenstasi …whoops, I mean White House Director of New Media, “via chain emails or through casual conversation.”

“Casual conversation,” eh? Why can’t these “dissenters” just be like normal people and read off the teleprompter?

“Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help,” continued Commissar Phillips. “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).”

Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously “well-dressed”? Is he mouthing off about cancer survival rates under socialized medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we’ll give you his spats! Just go to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), not to be confused with (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)., which is the email address for reporting President Obama’s latest approval rating. Go to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you’d like Speaker Pelosi to walk across your back as a whip-wielding SS dominatrix barking “Vee hoff vays of making you tokk less casually, dumbkopf!” Go to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you need parts for your new government car, or your new government hip replacement. Go to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you’d like a special preview of President Obama’s latest bare-chested pictorial for Vanity Fair. Go to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you’d like to report your neighbor’s cow for excessive CO2 emissions.

Better yet, just send everything on everyone to the White House. Unsure about that old hippie artist across the street? The one who said, “Yeah, I voted for Obama ‘cause I thought it’d be cool to have an African-American president. But, since the economic downturn, the bottom’s really dropped out of my hemp tapestry market.” He seems to be starting to entertain impure thoughts about the Dear Leader’s plans for us, doesn’t he? And yet, with the best will in the world, one couldn’t really describe him as a snappy dresser, could one? It’s a tough call. So best be on the safe side, and report everyone. The Administration can hire people to sift through it all, and that will stimulate the economy even more than the new cashmere-for-clunkers program: Are you an angry right-wing fop? Why not trade in your frankly effete sweater for an evening with Joe Biden?

The Washington Post’s Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (not, as far as I know, a Brooks sister to the Brooks Brothers) says “the town hall demolition derby” is “cynically designed and carried out in order to destroy real debate in the public square over health insurance reform”. Decrying the snarling, angry protesters, liberal talk-show host Bill Press (no relation to the Corby Trouser Press) says that “Americans want serious discussion” on health care. If only we’d stuck to the President’s August timetable and passed a gazillion-page health care reform entirely unread by the House of Representatives or the Senate (the world’s greatest deliberative body) in nothing flat, we’d now have all the time in the world to sit around having a “serious discussion” and “real debate” on whatever it was we just did to one-sixth of the economy.

But a sick deranged un-American mob has put an end to all that moderate and reasonable steamrollering by showing up and yelling insane, out-of-control questions like, “Awfully sorry to bother you, your Most Excellent Senatorial Eminence, but I was wondering if you could tell me why you don’t read any of the laws you make before you make them into law?”

The community is restless. The firm hand of greater organization is needed.

© Mark Steyn 2009

Representative Earl Pomeroy tells the home crowd how careful his is spending their money. The truth is that he has joined the most liberal profligate legislators and president to spend American into the most ominous financial hole in WORLD HISTORY. So listen to what he says but here are the facts. On the most significant bills thus far in the 111th Congress, POMEROY HAD VOTED WITH THE MOST LIBERAL BIG SPENDERS 93.333 PERCENT OF THE TIME!

Pomeroy and Obama claim that the debt was inherited from Bush. The facts do not agree with that assessment. Pomeroy, the Democrat Congress, and Obama have exploded spending and debt and their protestations not withstanding.

A post from Earl Pomeroy’s website dated, February 26, 2009 states:

“President Obama’s budget provides an honest accounting of the challenges facing our nation, from the economic crisis to the urgent need to reform our health care system, and provides a fiscally responsible blueprint for putting our economy back on the road to prosperity.

“The previous administration left our country with a massive budget deficit, but President Obama’s budget makes the tough choices necessary to cut the deficit in half by 2012.  The president’s budget also makes investments in renewable energy, higher education and infrastructure that will grow our economy for the long term.”

The 111th U.S. Congress has spent us into the most gigantic financial hole in ALL of human history. NEVER before has so much debt been obligated to you, your children, their children and generations unborn. When campaigning they DID NOT tell the voters that they would TAX AND SPEND like sober legislators.

An article from Human Events, “Blue Dog Dems Report Card” seemed a great reference to examine just how careful North Dakota’s Representative has been with America’s money and how often he votes with the leadership of the Democrat Party that is digging the gigantic hole of debt.

When calculating 16 of the most important votes so far in the 111th Congress of the 52 members in the Blue Dog Coalition 78% have voted in lockstep with ultra liberal Rep. Steny Hoyer.

Vote 16 HR 2: State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) The passage of SCHIP was the beginning of increased government interference in healthcare. SCHIP increased the cost of tobacco products in order to offset the $35 billion dollar expansion. The Washington Post reported that GOP critics said the “proposals will slow the economy, dramatically increase the deficit and make health care worse for the millions who already have insurance.” 96% of all Blue Dogs, voted for the expansion with Hoyer, only two members of the coalition voted against it.

Passed: 289 v 139.  Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 384: Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—Set conditions for using the second $350 billion of the $700 billion TARP bailout provided to failing banks, insurers, and automakers that included huge amounts of money spend on localized projects that had little to do with the failing economy (pork barrel spending). 82% of all Blue Dogs voted with Hoyer for the bailout

Passed 260 v 166. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 1: Economic Stimulus $787 billion spending package (the largest in US history) said to restore the ailing economy. Not one House Republican voted for the bill.  80% of all Blue Dogs voted with Hoyer for the spending package.

Passed 244 v 188. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 1: Economic Stimulus—Substitute Republican alternative to stimulus package that pushed for economical growth by way of investments rather than taxation. 96% of all Blue Dogs voted with Hoyer against the substitute. Only two voted for the Republican substitute Walt Minnick (Id-01) and Travis Childers (Ms-01).

Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 1105: Fiscal 2009 Omnibus Appropriations This $410 billion bill passed with over 8,500 earmarks. 69% of all Blue Dogs, voted with Hoyer for this bill.

Passed 245 v 178. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 1106: Mortgage Loans Modification Passage of this bill gave bankruptcy courts the authority to modify the terms or reduce the principal balance of a homeowner’s mortgage, while protecting lenders from investors when loan terms are altered. It increased the number of people eligible to file for bankruptcy and permitted homeowners to file bankruptcy if the current value of their home is less than the amount owed on it. By doing this more banks would be in trouble and banks would have affectively lost their ability to write and have borrowers keep the terms of their loans. 68% of Blue Dogs voting, voted with Hoyer.

Passed 234 v 191. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

H Con Res 85: Fiscal 2010 Budget Resolution Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget included large tax increases on small businesses, proposed a $646 billion dollar tax on families through “Cap and Trade” legislation, and a resurrection of the Death Tax. Again not one House Republican voted for the bill.  73% of Blue Dogs voting, voted with Hoyer.

Passed 233 v 196. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

H Con Res 85: Fiscal 2010 Budget Resolution – Substitute Led by ranking Republican of the House Budgetary Committee, Paul Ryan (R.-Wi.), a Republican alternative to Obama’s budget suggested major policy changes to the Congress. Aimed heavily at tax reform, calling for a reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25%, keeping federal spending at the pre-recession level of slightly above 20% of the GDP and proposing a moratorium on earmarks. Overall, this alternative would have resulted in $23,000 less in debt per household than President Obama’s budget. 100% of Blue Dogs voting, voted with Hoyer against the fiscally conservative Republican substitute.

Failed 137 v 293. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 1913: Hate Crimes Prosecution Passage of this bill expanded federal hate crimes law to cover those based on sexual orientation, gender identity or disability and in doing so put freedom of speech and religion at risk. 68% of Blue Dogs voting, voted with Hoyer.

Passed 249 v 175. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 2847: Fiscal 2010 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations More dramatic increases in spending. CQ.com reported the bill “would appropriate $64.5 billion in fiscal 2010 for the departments of Commerce and Justice and other agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation. It would provide $27.7 billion for the Justice Department and $13.8 billion for the Commerce Department. It would appropriate $7.9 billion for the FBI and $6.2 billion for the federal prison system. The bill would fund NASA at $18.2 billion, the National Science Foundation at $6.9 billion and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at $4.6 billion.” Rep. Steven King (Rep.-Iowa) tried to introduce an amendment that would have cut ACORN out of the 2010 Census. This would have prevented taxpayer dollars from being allocated to ACORN After Obama hired the organization to “partner” with the 2010 Census Bureau.  89% of Blue Dogs voting, voted with Hoyer

Passed 259 v 157. Pomeroy did not vote.

HR 2996: Fiscal 2010 Interior-Environment Appropriations More dramatic increases in spending. The bill represents a 17% increase over the spending from the 2009 bill and a 38% increase of federal funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. Combined with the stimulus, the EPA will receive $25 billion this year. Of the 105 amendments offered to the bill, mostly dealing with cutting specific extraneous costs, only 13 were approved after being neglected by the Democratic House Rules Committee. 78% of Blue Dogs voting, voted with Hoyer

Passed 254 v 173. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 2454: Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Cap and Trade)  In 2012 when the 1,200-page bill is enacted, for a household of four, energy costs go up $436 and reach $1,241 in 2035, averaging $829 annually over that span, cites a Heritage Foundation study. Between 2012 and 2035 over a million jobs will be lost. GDP will be reduced by an average $393 billion per annum between 2012 and 2035, totaling $9.4 trillion. Low-income households would be hit hardest by Cap and Trade, because they use a greater proportion of energy. 44% of all Blue Dogs voted with Hoyer.

Passed 219 v 212. Pomeroy voted No.

HR 2997: Fiscal 2010 Agriculture Appropriations This bill represents a $2.436 billion or 11.9% increase over 2009 spending. Republicans offered an amendment that would have represented only a 2% increase in spending, but this was rejected along party lines. The bill contains 320 earmarks, totaling $225 million. Compared to 4 years ago, the FDA will receive a 54% increase in federal funding. The FDA will receive $3.04 billion for FY 2010. All Republicans voted in opposition. 88% of all Blue Dogs voted with Hoyer.

Passed 260 v 166. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 3081: Fiscal 2010 State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Of all the appropriations bills, HR 3081 represents the biggest increase in spending from FY 2009. This bill entails total spending of $48.8 billion, $12.2 billion, or 33% increase over spending in 2009. The cost for the average family is $460.54. Agencies funded through HR 3081 also received $4.2 billion in stimulus handouts and $14.7 billion from the Supplemental War Funding bill. From FY 2007 to 2009, non-defense spending increased 85%. According to gop.gov, $26.2 billion funding for the Department of State includes “the civilian stabilization initiative, educational and cultural exchange programs, embassy protection and security, overseas peacekeeping, contributions to international organizations (such as the United Nations), international commissions, and broadcasting activities.”  90% of all Blue Dogs voted with Hoyer.

Passed 318 v 106. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 3170: Fiscal 2010 Financial Services Appropriations This bill barely passed in the House needing 215 votes—just squeaking by with 219. It allocates $24.15 billion in discretionary spending in addition to the stimulus bill total. Agencies receiving money from this bill will rack in $29.7 billion. Overall, the bill contains 150 earmarks and will cost the average family $448.19. 57% of all Blue Dogs voted with Hoyer.

Passed 219 v 208. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

HR 3183: Fiscal 2010 Energy-Water Appropriations This bill allocates $33.3 billion in discretionary spending, or less than 1% above the FY 2009 level. But agencies receiving funds through HR 3183 already received $58.7 in emergency spending, mostly from the stimulus bill, totaling $92 billion. Will cost the average family $413.57. An amendment for a 5% cut across the board was rejected.  94% of all Blue Dogs voting, voted with Hoyer.

Passed 320 v 97. Pomeroy votes with Hoyer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Henry Waxman.

Here it is. Let there be no doubt. You can believe NOTHING that OBAMA and the Democrats tell you about what it is they are trying to do.

They want nothing less than control of your body.

Here is all you need to know.

Conrad, Dorgan, and Pomeroy have to know that this is the end game, yet they are silent and are even having meetings to promote this!

Among the many, many prevarications that emanate from Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, etc., is that there are many millions of uninsured Americans.

“This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.” – Barack Obama, July 26, 2009

Representative Earl Pomeroy has joined the ranks of those either deceptive or ignorant politicians by making claims that give a distorted picture to North Dakota citizens when the Bismarck Tribune reported that:

Pomeroy said the nation’s health care system is in need of a reform, with an estimated 47 million uninsured Americans.

Who are these uninsured? Why are they uninsured? Will the fix (ObamasCare) address what they “claim” is the problem?

Apparently, with their very large support staff, the Democrats have been unable to undertake the simple task of reviewing the U.S. Census Bureau report, “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007” which explains the true circumstances of the so called “uninsured”.

One man, able to do what none of the staff members of Democrat politicians could or would had done the due diligence toward serving America. Mark Levin, writing in his best selling book “Liberty and Tyranny” simply restates the facts ignored by North Dakota’s U.S. House representative Earl Pomeroy:

It is said by the proponents of government-run health care that 47 million people go without health care in the United States. For example, during the so-called Cover the Uninsured Week event in 2008, Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi issued a statement declaring that this is the “time to reaffirm our commitment to access to quality, affordable health care for every American, including the 47 million who live in fear of even a minor illness because they lack health insurance…In the wealthiest nation on earth, it is scandalous that a single working American or a young child must face life without the economic security of health coverage.” This is more deceit.

In 2006, the Census Bureau reported that there were 46.6 million people without health insurance. About 9.5 million were not United States citizens. Another 17 million lived in households with incomes exceeding $50,000 a year and could, presumably, purchase their own health care coverage. Eighteen million of the 46.6 million uninsured were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, most of whom were in good health and not necessarily in need of health-care coverage or chose not to purchase it. Moreover, only 30 percent of the nonelderly population who became uninsured in a given year remained uninsured for more than twelve months. Almost 50 percent regained their health coverage within four months. The 47 million “uninsured” figure used by Pelosi and others is widely inaccurate.

Widely and this author might add, KNOWINGLY inaccurate.

So why does Representative Earl Pomeory either not know the facts of the 47 million claim or continue to perpetrate this fraud on the citizens?

He must not know these FACTS. Because he would never try to deceive the citizens of North Dakota.

Listening to Obama and the Democrats talk about portability, coverage for all, saving money, ….etc., you have to wonder how anyone could oppose such benevolence. But the devil is in the details and Hell is the reality. This health care fraud is about far more than the left is letting on. Watching the goings on in the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee as the H.R. 3200 is refined and constructed tells the real story. From the GREAT site, Committee On House Ways and Means Republicans:

Democrats Refuse to Let Americans Keep the Insurance They Have and Like 2 out of 3 will lose their health insurance

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to strike the government-run plan. When speaking before the American Medical Association, President Obama stated that, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” However, the Democrats government-run plan breaks this promise. According to two independent studies: The government-run plan will result in more than 100 million Americans losing their current private health coverage.

This amendment to let Americans keep the insurance they like by striking the government-run plan was defeated, 25-15

Democrats Protect Themselves, Not the Public from Government-Run Plan

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) to require all Members of Congress to get insurance through the government-run plan – proving Democrats do not think the government-plan will provide quality health care. Republicans voted in favor of the amendment, believing if it is good enough for the American people, it should be good enough for Member of Congress.

This amendment to ensure Members of Congress don’t exempt themselves from the government-run plan was defeated 21-18

Democrats ‘OK’ Government Rationing of Medicines & Treatments

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA) to prohibit the use of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) to make coverage determinations on the basis of cost. As it relates to the role of the Health Benefits Advisory Committee recommendations the discussion draft introduced last month said: “In developing such recommendations, the Committee shall take into account innovation in health care and ensure that essential benefits coverage does not lead to rationing of health care.” The new bill says: “In developing such recommendations, the Committee shall take into account innovation in health care and consider how such standards could reduce health disparities.” Democrats actually removed what little language they had protecting Americans from the rationing of care. This subtle change makes it more likely we will face the rationing of care experienced in other countries.

This amendment to prevent the government from using the results of comparative effectiveness research to make coverage decisions based on cost was defeated 26-15

Democrats Okay with Government-Run Plan Increasing Wait Times, Cancer Deaths

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) to repeal the government-run plan if wait times exceed certain thresholds. In order to save money, the government-run insurance plan created in the Democrat bill could ration health care by making Americans wait to see their doctors. Giving millions of Americans an insurance card with the seal of the federal government on it will mean little if patients are unable to see a doctor. Republicans believe if the government-run plan results in beneficiaries being forced into long wait lines to be treated, then it should be repealed.

This amendment to terminate the government-run plan if it led to rationing by delay was defeated 26-15

Democrats Raise Taxes on Employers in Recession

Despite national unemployment rates approaching 10 percent, Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) to strike the job-killing employer mandate. The Democrats’ bill contains hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax increases, hitting employers especially hard, including an 8 percent payroll tax on employers who:

  * Can’t afford to offer health insurance to their employers;   * Do the right thing and offer health coverage to their employees but it’s arbitrarily deemed “insufficient” by the government;   * Offer “sufficient” coverage but the employee enrolls in coverage elsewhere (e.g. coverage through a spouse’s employer); or   * Aren’t paying at least 72.5% of an employee’s premium (65% for family coverage).

This amendment to strike this tax increase on employers was defeated 25-15

Democrats Prefer Trial Lawyers to Lowering Health Care Costs

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. John Linder (R-GA) to prohibit the government-run exchange from operating in States that do not provide for reasonable medical liability regulations. Fundamental health reform and bending the cost curve cannot be considered serious and complete without addressing medical liability reform. Many physicians are forced to provide unnecessary and duplicative tests to protect themselves from overzealous trial lawyers, resulting in fees of billions of dollars and wasted resources every year.

This amendment to limit participation in the exchange to those living in states with meaningful medical malpractice reforms was defeated 26-15

Democrats Vote Against Making Sure Illegal Aliens Don’t Get Subsidized Health Insurance

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) to better screen applicants for subsidized health care to ensure they are actually citizens or otherwise entitled to it. The underlying bill is insufficient for the purpose of preventing illegal aliens from accessing the bill’s proposed benefits, as it does not provide mechanisms allowing those administering the program to ensure illegal aliens cannot access taxpayer-funded subsidies and benefits.

This amendment to provide better verification of eligibility for benefits under the bill was defeated 26-15

Democrats to Force Plans to Provide Abortions

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) to ensure the defined minimum benefits in the government-run exchange not include abortions. The Democrats’ bill gives the Secretary of HHS and an unelected federal health board unprecedented authority to mandate which benefits private health plans in the exchange, and the government health plan, are required to cover. The Secretary and a committee of federal bureaucrats should not be allowed to use this authority to mandate that health plans cover abortions.

This amendment to prohibit the government from requiring health insurance plans to cover abortions was defeated 23-18

Democrats Set Different Rules For & Allow Taxpayer Bailouts of New Government-Run Plan

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) to require the government plan to maintain reserves and other margins in amounts consistent with insurance standards that apply to private plans. The amendment would further clarify that reserves would have to come from premiums, not taxpayers thru federal subsidies.

This amendment to make the government-run plan operate on a more level playing field was defeated 22-19

Democrats Want Government to Deny Doctors, Hospitals the Right to Choose Which Plans to Participate In

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) to ban the Health and Human Services Secretary from forcing providers to participate in the government-run plan. Republicans believe it is wrong to force anyone to offer services in this plan that will underpay doctors and hospitals.

This amendment to ensure providers aren’t compelled to see patients enrolled in the government-run plan was defeated 25-16

Democrats Vote to Eliminate Private Insurance, Force Everyone into Government-Run Plan by Attrition

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA) to repeal the prohibition on new enrollees in private individual market plans. Today there are 16 million Americans who are enrolled in an individual market health plan. House Democrats want to eliminate this option for every American. The Democrats’ bill says that beginning in 2013 the health plans that provide coverage for these Americans could no longer enroll new members. This will cause a slow and steady attrition out of these plans, violating the promise that you should be able to keep the coverage you like.

This amendment to prevent the slow but steady erosion of the individual insurance market was defeated 26-15

Democrats to Force Taxpayers to Fund Abortions

Democrats voted against an amendment offered by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) to ensure that no taxpayer money would go to plans that pay for abortions. The Democrats’ bill allows for plans that would require taxpayers and private insurance companies to subsidize abortions. Presently, all government-subsidized health care plans (SCHIP, DOD, Medicaid, etc.) prohibit abortion coverage.  Any plan that Congress passes must include this prohibition.

This amendment to prohibit the government from forcing taxpayers to fund abortions was defeated 22-19.

If you have been confused by the rhetoric about how wonderful and benign this legislation will be, you now know the real story. Ignore what Obama and the Democrats say. This is what they fully intend on doing. This is not about providing health care. This is about controlling YOUR BODY!

Always consider how much of what President says that you believe!

Whenever Representative Pomeroy does the right thing he deserves an “atta-boy”. It was missed earlier, but on July 20, 2009, according to Medical News Today:

The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday voted 23-18 to approve its health care reform bill (HR 3200) after rejecting dozens of Republican amendments, including attempts to exclude abortion coverage from the essential benefit package created in the legislation, CQ Today reports. An amendment offered by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) was rejected in an 18-23 vote; Reps. Bill Pascrell (N.J.), Earl Pomeroy (N.D.) and John Tanner (Tenn.) were the only Democrats to support the amendment.

One must wonder how this squares with Representative Pomeroy’s vote a few days earlier to support government funding in the District of Columbia of Pre-birth Infanticide?

Stay tuned as the inner workings of the Democrat controlled U.S. House Ways and Mean Committee as they “markup” (build) legislation is probably the most direct and unfiltered indication of how U.S. House legislators are really representing their constituents.

My conservative friends – and even a few media liberals – are agreed: The bloom is off the Obama rose. He’s not the Obamessiah, just another 50 per cent president. He tried to do too much too fast, and his numbers are sinking. The Europeanization of health care is dead. Fuhgeddabouddit.

I wouldn’t be so sure. President Obama has no choice but to move fast, in part because the image he presented during the campaign – a post-partisan, post-racial, post-anything-unpleasant-and-controversial pragmatic centrist – was a total crock. He has a vast transformative domestic agenda and, because most of its elements are not terribly popular, he has to accomplish it at speed or he won’t get it done at all.

Health care “reform”? As we’ve seen this past week in the House of Representatives, put not your trust in “Blue Dog Democrats”. And, as we’ll no doubt see in the weeks ahead in the Senate, put not your trust in “moderate Republicans” whose urge to “reach across the aisle” is so reflexive it ought to be covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The President needs to get something passed. Anything. The details don’t matter. Once it’s in place, health care “reform” can be re-reformed endlessly.  Indeed, you’ll be surprised how little else we talk about. So, for example, public funding for abortions can be discarded now, and written in – as it surely will be by some judge – down the road. What matters is to ram it through, get it done, pass it now – in whatever form.

If this seems a perverse obsession for a nation with a weak economy, rising unemployment and a war on two fronts, it has a very sound strategic logic behind it. As I wrote in National Review a week or two back, health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. That’s its attraction for an ambitious president: It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists – to those who believe government has a legitimate right to regulate human affairs in every particular.

That’s not why it’s tanking in the polls, of course. It’s floundering because Obama sold it initially on the basis of “controlling costs”, and then the Congressional Budget Office let the cat out of the bag and pointed out that, au contraire, it would cost $1.6 trillion, and therefore either add to an unsustainable deficit, or require massive tax increases, or (more likely) both.

All of which is true. But to object to the governmentalization of health care on that basis implicitly concedes the argument that, if we could figure out a way to bring the price down, it would be fine and dandy. Right now, there are a lot of wonkish and utilitarian objections to what the Democrats want to do, and they’re gaining traction. In The American Spectator, Brandon Crocker points out that this is exactly the way things went over Hillarycare in 1993: Americans took against the plan on practical grounds but not against the underlying principle. “Since we did not win that philosophical argument in 1993,” Mr Crocker writes, “we now have to fight the same battle today.” And, if we win on utilitarian grounds today, we’ll have to fight it again in ten years, five years, maybe less – until something passes, and then everything changes, forever: As the IRA famously taunted Margaret Thatcher, we only have to get lucky once; you have to be lucky every day.

On the price tag: It’s often argued that, as a proportion of GDP, America spends more on health care than countries with government medical systems. But, as a point of fact, “America” doesn’t spend anything on health care: Hundreds of millions of people make hundreds of millions of individual decisions about what they’re going to spend on health care. Whereas up north a handful of bureaucrats determine what Canada will spend on health care – and that’s that: Health care is a government budget item. If Joe Hoser in Moose Jaw wants to increase Canada’s health care spending by $500 drawn from his savings account, he can’t: The law prevents it. Unless, as many Canadians do, he drives south and spends it in a US hospital for treatment he can’t get in a timely manner in his own country.

You can make the “controlling costs” argument about anything: After all, it’s no surprise that millions of free people freely choosing how they spend their own money will spend it in different ways than government bureaucrats would be willing to license on their behalf. America spends more per capita on food than Zimbabwe. America spends more on vacations than North Korea. America spends more on lap-dancing than Saudi Arabia (well, officially). Canada spends more per capita on doughnuts than America, and, given comparative girths, Canucks are clearly not getting as much bang for the buck. Why doesn’t Ottawa introduce a National Doughnut Licensing Agency? You’d still see your general dispenser for simple procedures like a lightly sugared cruller but he’d refer you to a specialist if you needed, say, a maple-frosted custard, and it would only be a six-month wait, at the end of which you’d receive a stale cinnamon roll. Under government regulation, eventually every doughnut would be all hole and no doughnut, and the problem would be solved. Even if the hole costs $1.6 trillion.

How did the health-care debate decay to the point where we think it entirely natural for the central government to fix a collective figure for what 300 million freeborn citizens ought to be spending on something as basic to individual liberty as their own bodies?

That’s the argument that needs to be won. And, if you think I’m being frivolous in positing bureaucratic regulation of doughnuts and vacations, consider that under the all-purpose umbrellas of “health” and “the environment”, governments of supposedly free nations are increasingly comfortable straying into areas of diet and leisure. Last year, a British bill attempted to ban Tony the Tiger, longtime pitchman for Frosties, from children’s TV because of his malign influence on young persons. Why not just ban Frosties? Or permit it by prescription only? Or make kids stand outside on the sidewalk to eat it? It was also proposed – by the Conservative Party, alas – that, in the interests of saving the planet, each citizen should be permitted to fly a certain number of miles a year, after which he would be subject to punitive eco-surtaxes. Isn’t restricting freedom of movement kind of, you know …totalitarian?

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks – drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.

Government health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs”. It’s a liberty issue. I’d rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.

And it came to pass in the Age of Insanity that the people of the land called America , having lost their morals, their initiative, and their will to defend their liberties, chose as their Supreme Leader that person known as “The One”.

He emerged from the vapors with a message that had no meaning; but He hypnotized the people telling them, “I am sent to save you. My lack of experience, my questionable ethics, my monstrous ego, and my association with evil doers are of no consequence. For I shall save you with Hope and ‘Change’. Go, therefore, and proclaim throughout the land that he who preceded me is evil, that he has defiled the nation, and that all he has built must be destroyed.”

And the people rejoiced, for even though they knew not what “The One” would do, he had ‘promised’ that it was good; and they believed.  And “The One” said, “We live in the greatest country in the world. “Help me change everything about it!”

And the people said, “Hallelujah! Change is good!”

Then He said, “We are going to tax the rich fat-cats.”

And the people said, “Sock it to them!” “And redistribute their wealth.”

And the people said, “Show us the money!”

And then He said, “Redistribution of wealth is good for everybody”

And Joe the plumber asked, “Are you kidding me? You’re going to steal my money and give it to the deadbeats?”

And “The One” ridiculed and taunted him, and Joe’s personal records were hacked and publicized.

One lone reporter asked, “Isn’t that Marxist policy?” And she was banished from the kingdom!

Then a citizen asked, “With no foreign relations experience and having zero military experience or knowledge, how will you deal with radical terrorists?”

And “The One” said, “Simple. I shall sit with them and talk with them and show them how nice we really are; and they will forget that they ever wanted to kill us all!”

And the people said, “Hallelujah!! We are safe at last, and we can beat our weapons into free cars for the people!”

Then “The One” said, “I shall give 95% of you lower taxes.”

And one, lone voice said,” But 40% of us don’t pay ANY taxes.”

So “The One” said, “Then I shall give you some of the taxes the fat-cats pay!”

And the people said,” Hallelujah!! Show us the money!”

Then “The One” said, “I shall tax your Capital Gains when you sell your homes!”

And the people yawned and the slumping housing market collapsed.

And He said, “I shall mandate employer- funded health care for EVERY worker and raise the minimum wage. And I shall give every person unlimited healthcare and medicine and transportation to the clinics.”  And the people said, “Give me some of that!”

Then he said, “I shall penalize employers who ship jobs overseas.”

And the people said, “Where’s my rebate check?”

Then “The One” said, “I shall bankrupt the coal industry and electricity rates will skyrocket!”

And the people said, “Coal is dirty, coal is evil, no more coal! But we don’t care for that part about higher electric rates.”

So “The One” said, “Not to worry. If your rebate isn’t enough to cover your expenses, we shall bail you out. Just sign up with ACORN and your troubles are over!”

Then He said, “Illegal immigrants feel scorned and slighted. Let’s grant them amnesty, Social Security, free education, free lunches, free medical care, bi-lingual signs and guaranteed housing…”

And the people said, “Hallelujah!!” And they made him King!

And so it came to pass that employers, facing spiraling costs and ever-higher taxes, raised their prices and laid off workers. Others simply gave up and went out of business and the economy sank like unto a rock dropped from a cliff. The banking industry was destroyed.

Manufacturing slowed to a crawl. And more of the people were without a means of support.

Then “The One” said, “I am the “The One” - The Messiah - and I’m here to save you! We shall just print more money so everyone will have enough!”

But our foreign trading partners said unto Him, “Wait a minute. Your dollar is not worth a pile of camel dung! You will have to pay more…”

And the people said, “Wait a minute. That is unfair!!”

And the world said, “Neither are these other idiotic programs you have embraced. Lo, you have become a Socialist state and a second-rate power. Now you shall play by our rules!”

And the people cried out, “Alas, alas!! What have we done?”

But yea verily, it was too late.

The people set upon “The One” and spat upon him and stoned him, and his name was dung. And the once mighty nation was no more; and the once proud people were without sustenance or shelter or hope.

And the Change “The One” had given them was as like unto a poison that had destroyed them and like a whirlwind that consumed all that they had built.

And the people beat their chests in despair and cried out in anguish, “Give us back our nation and our pride and our hope!!”

But it was too late, and their homeland was no more.

From over the internet transom….Hat Tip to Herb M.

Thanks.