Posted from Life Site News

By Kathleen Gilbert — A series of recent public opinion polls and anti-Obamacare petitions have shown that President Obama and his health care overhaul are continuing to decline in popularity at the end of a turbulent Congressional recess.

The public disapproval rating of Obama’s handling of health care has jumped nine points since July to 52 per cent, according to an Associated Press-GfK survey released today.  In the same poll, 49 said they disapproved of Obama’s overall performance, up from 42 per cent in July. 

The most recent Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that 31 per cent of the nation’s voters strongly approve of Obama’s presidential performance, while 39 per cent said they strongly disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8. 

Scott Rasmussen noted in an August Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the polls indicate Obama’s efforts to galvanize support for his plan have grim prospects of success: only 25 per cent of American voters strongly favor the health care reform, while 41 per cent strongly oppose it.  Among independent voters in August, 60 per cent opposed the bill while 35 per cent were in favor, with 47 per cent strongly opposed and 16 per cent strongly favoring. 

Obama is scheduled to speak today to a joint session of Congress, presumably the latest attempt to persuade reluctant bipartisan lawmakers to accept his health reform agenda.

A Zogby Interactive Survey released August 31 noted that the August drop in support ran across several of Obama’s core constituencies.  Democrats, liberals, African-Americans, and young voters in the survey who approved of Obama’s job performance all showed a drop of about 8-9 points since July 24.

Read the rest of the story at LifeSiteNews.com

From the Weekly Standard

By Fred Barnes — President Obama’s speech to Congress last night can be summed up rather easily. It was 40 minutes of boilerplate followed by a socko, emotional finish exploiting the death of Senator Teddy Kennedy. Which leads to this question: was Obama’s finishing kick sufficient to achieve his goal of “reframing” the national debate on health care that hasn’t been going his way? I don’t think so.

Obama didn’t come close to offering a persuasive explanation of how he’d pay for ObamaCare. And that remains his biggest problem. He promises much, much more in guaranteed health benefits and says it will cost less. Even Obama himself couldn’t really believe that. No one else who can add and subtract does. Cut “waste, fraud, and abuse?” Not a chance.

There was one mild surprise. Instead of scaling back his plan to comply with public sentiment, Obama stuck to every promise and provision on which he’s dwelled in more than two dozen speeches. There was nothing new, except the size of his audience.

From this, it’s clear he’s decided to push a partisan bill through Congress with Democratic votes alone. We could tell this from the pleased expression House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had on her face throughout the speech. She’s belongs to the no-compromise school.

But unless Obama has suddenly transformed public opinion, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won’t be able to find enough Democrats, even among the usually malleable Blue Dogs,

willing to vote for ObamaCare. Defy the public to bail out a president in trouble? Only Democrats in safe seats are likely to do that.

I had five questions that I looked for Obama to answer in his address. I wanted to see if he was serious about achieving moderate, bipartisan health care. It turns out he’s not. Here are the questions.

1) Did he advocate real tort reform to curb health care costs? Nope. He simply talked up a pilot project that he said was President Bush’s idea. This was a trifle.

2) Did he offer anything of significance to Republicans? No.

3) Did he bring up his favorite straw man about those whose alternative to ObamaCare is to do nothing at all to reform the health care system? Yes, more than once.

4) Did he demonize the health care providers he’s actually made deals with? Well, not all of them, but the health insurers took their usual beating.

5) Did he repeat the false claims he’s made repeatedly in earlier speeches? Yes indeed. He brought up nearly all of them, including the ones on no abortion coverage, no loss of one’s current health insurance, and the “savings” that would come from more preventive care.

As a matter of stagecraft, Obama made a big mistake. He spent precious minutes delivering his same old arguments that have left a majority of Americans cold. He should have started with the Kennedy riff.

From the Weekly Standard

By by Stanley Goldfarb — The president’s plan to reduce health-care costs mostly depends on reducing the cost of the premiums of those “villainous” insurance companies. This plan is premised on the idea that insurance companies have large profits and administrative expenses that can be pared down without any real impact on the payments to those who provide health care. It also assumes that health-care costs have risen because of the rise in insurance premiums. Unfortunately, logic and data do not support either contention. If Obama’s plan passes, the country may spend the next five years vainly waiting for reduced insurance premiums to control health care costs.

The first obvious problem with this plan is that every incentive exists for for-profit insurance companies to maximize profits, hence their designation as for-profit companies. No publicly traded for-profit company can survive if it loads up on administrative costs to keep down profits. If the profits of health-care insurance companies were very high, then obviously an argument could be made to utilize those windfall profits to underwrite the cost of insuring the uninsured. In fact, the health insurance segment of the insurance business is just not terribly profitable.

The health-insurance industry ranked 86th among U.S. industrial sectors, according to Yahoo finance. The average profit margin for the industry as a whole was a mere 3.3 percent of revenues. Certainly there is some money to wring out of this margin, but to “bend the curve” of the growth of 17 percent of the U.S. economy, reducing these profits will not suffice. Reducing premiums will instead reduce the payment to physicians and hospitals, as that is the largest expense to these companies, somewhere between 80 to 95 percent depending on the particular firm. Reduce the premium and reduce the payment–or drive the company out of business. And perhaps this is the ultimate goal.

Read the rest of the column

From Sermo.com; the group responsible for the petition:

Join Sermo to add your signature to the Physicians’ Appeal below. And let lawmakers know that you want to contribute to the reform process. After the August recess, the signed Appeal will be delivered to Senators in every state. Each Senator will then be invited to speak with the Sermo community about the real issues at the root of spiraling healthcare costs.

To the American People,

We, the physicians of this country want to reform healthcare to improve the quality and access to care for our patients while reducing costs. True healthcare reform will only succeed if:

• Unnecessary tests and procedures are reduced through tort and malpractice reform
• Doctors are allowed to spend more time with their patients and less time on paperwork by streamlining billing and making pricing more transparent (create an alternative to CPT codes).
• Medical decisions are made by physicians and their patients, not insurance company administrators.
• Adequate supply of qualified physicians is assured by revising the methods used for calculating reimbursements.

We invite policy makers to work directly with the men and women who are on the frontlines of healthcare each and every day caring for the citizens of this country.

We pledge to be partners in true healthcare reform, improving the healthcare delivery system in this country while honoring the Hippocratic oath that we all have taken.

Respectfully Yours,

America’s Physicians

Posted from National Review Online

By John C. Goodman — Lies and distortions,” said David Axelrod in an e-mail to 13 million of the Obama faithful plus an untold number of others who were spammed. He was referring to criticisms of the Obama health-care-reform plan—criticisms that are hitting the mark, to judge by opinion polls and the near-riotous responses members of Congress have gotten at town-hall meetings.

Chief among the White House’s irritations is Sarah Palin’s accusation that Obama would create “death panels” to decide who lives and who dies. It is true that none of the bills before Congress calls for the creation of such entities, but does Palin’s statement, however hyperbolic, point toward legitimate concerns? Is there something we should be worried about? The answer is: Yes, we should be very worried.

Read the rest of the editorial here.

From the New York Post

By Betsy McCaughey — When President Obama addresses Congress and the nation tonight, he should pledge to do three things.

First, he should announce that he will discard the 1,018-page health bill drafted in the House of Representatives and replace it with a 20-page bill in plain English. Twenty pages should be sufficient. The framers of the US Constitution established an entire federal government in 18 pages.

One reason for the rancor over the current health bill is that few people, including members of Congress, know what it says.

When those who have read it point to its dangerous provisions, the bill’s defenders offer vague denials, and most people have no way of knowing who is telling the truth. Its not just the bill’s length that’s the problem.

Intentionally or not, the bill gives readers the runaround.

John Conyers, House Judiciary chairman, said in exasperation, “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

Consider section 805 (p. 157), mandating that employers provide health insurance for their workers:

“Section 502 of such Act (29 USC 1132) is amended in subsection (a) (6) by striking paragraph and all that follows through subsection (c) and inserting paragraph (2), (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) or (11) of subsection (c) and (2) in subsection (c), by redesignating the second paragraph (10) as paragraph (12) and by inserting after the first paragraph (10) the following new paragraph.”

Who could understand this gobbledygook? You have to consult dozens of other pieces of legislation to patch the meaning together.

And yet employers who fail to follow this provision would face fines of up to $500,000 a year, even if their failure to obey the law was due to reasonable cause (page 158).

Legislation like this is undemocratic. Politicians can slip in pork-barrel spending and self-serving provisions without the rest of us knowing it’s happening.

Secondly, the president should announce that the purpose of his 20-page bill is to cover the truly uninsured. Period.

In these economically frightening times, let’s meet that urgent need, rather than embarking on a health-care overhaul and wild spending spree with unintended consequences.

Afterward, Congress can make other improvements in the health system, at a prudent pace, including stopping insurance companies from refusing claims and protecting doctors from unfair lawsuits.

Who are the truly uninsured?

According to the US Census, 47 million people say they are uninsured. But 14 million are already eligible for government programs such as Medicaid or SCHIP (for children) and simply haven’t signed up. Another 10 million have household incomes over $75,000.

That leaves 23.7 million people who probably can’t afford insurance. However, an estimated 12 million of these people are newcomers to the United States, many here illegally.

The largest influx of immigrants in any seven years in American history occurred in the present decade. In this same decade, the lion’s share of the increase in uninsured took place in the five border states.

In tough times, its fair to look out for our own first, which means helping about 12 million Americans.

Covering them is affordable, especially because many are young, and others are uninsured temporarily, less than a year.

Thirdly, the president should announce that he will divert the unused stimulus funds to this purpose.

There’s enough in the pot — over $500 billion to cover these 12 million for the next decade.

Help can be delivered immediately via electronically loaded debit cards or certificates for a certain dollar value accepted by insurance plans.

The unspent stimulus funds are enough to buy a $1,000 deductible plan for every uninsured family earning less than $50,000 and provide a partial subsidy to those earning $50,000 to $75,000.

This will protect families from going bankrupt or losing their home if someone in the family gets seriously ill or has an accident.

Let’s be practical. Americans want to put a lid on the deficit, help the uninsured immediately, and pay for it without making dangerous cuts in Medicare.

If they have health insurance they like, they want to keep it.

And they want to be sure their representatives are not pulling a fast one by passing a thousand-page bill that puts new rules on them and their doctors while exempting Washington insiders, or spends billions on pork.

President Obama and Speaker Pelosi deny the existence of so-called “death panels” in the health care reform package now underway in Congress, but provisions in the bill call for physician-directed end of life planning, similar to what’s been enacted in England. England’s National Health Service calls the program an “End of Life Scheme.” This article from the UK Telegraph demonstrates the potential pitfalls of such a plan.

The daughter of a stroke victim claims that her father is to be wrongly placed on an NHS scheme for the terminally ill which experts say is causing some patients to die too soon.

By Chris Irvine and Kate Devlin

Rosemary Munkenbeck says her father Eric Troake, who entered hospital after suffering a stroke, had fluid and drugs withdrawn and she claims doctors wanted to put him on morphine until he passed away under a scheme for dying patients called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).

Mrs Munkenbeck, 56, from Bracknell, said her father, who previously said he wanted to live until he was 100, has now said he wants to die after being deprived of fluids for five days.

Along with her sister Jocelyn Troake, 60, who lived in Bermuda until recently moving to Frimley, Surrey, to care full time for her father and her mother Edna, 93, they are convinced their father is a victim of the system.

Last week The Daily Telegraph reported a warning from experts that some patients with terminal illnesses were being wrongly put on the NHS scheme and allowed to die prematurely if they ticked “the right boxes”.

The pathway scheme was developed to improve the care of patients in their dying hours and ensure that they were not being “overmedicalised”.

The scheme encourages doctors and other health care staff to consider removing medication, fluids and other treatments that no longer benefit the patient.

It also recommends discussing the situation with relatives, and if possible, with the patient themselves.

Mrs Munkenbeck said that her father was taken off an intravenous drip last week but she argues that he has as much of a right to life as anyone else. Although a spokesman for Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey says Mr Troake is not on the scheme “at the moment”, it is likely he will be offered a plan of care for dying patients.

“We believe that he has been forced down this route. By withdrawing fluids he is now very weak and there’s no going back from it,” she told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

Read the rest of this story at UK’s Telegraph.

Below is a letter written by Dr. Stephen E Fraser of Indianapolis, Indiana to Senator Evan Bayh (D, Indiana).  Is there any wonder why the Democrats tried to rush this bill through Congress before anyone could read it?

July 23, 2009

Senator Bayh,

As a practicing physician I have major concerns with the healthcare bill before Congress. I actually have read the bill and am shocked by the brazenness of the government’s proposed involvement in the patient physician relationship. The very idea that the government will dictate and ration patient care is dangerous and certainly not helpful in designing a healthcare system that works for all. Every physician I work with agrees that we need to fix our healthcare system, but the proposed bills currently making their way through congress will be a disaster if passed.

I ask you respectfully and as a patriotic American to look at the following troubling lines that I have read in the bill. You cannot possibly believe that these proposals are in the best interests of the country and our fellow citizens.

Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self insure!!

Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill – THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.

Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!

Page 42 of HC Bill:The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC Benefits for you. You have no choice!

Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise

Page 58 HC Bill: Govt will have real-time access to individuals finances & a National ID Healthcard will be issued!

Page 59 HC Bill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to you ur banks accounts for elective funds transfer.

Page 65 Sec 164: is a payoff subsidized plan for retirees and their families in Unions & community organizations: (ACORN).

Page 84 Sec 203 HC bill: Govt mandates ALL benefit packages for private HC plans in the Exchange.

Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration your Healthcare!

Page 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill: Govt mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example – Translation: illegal aliens.

Page 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18: The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for Govt HC plan.

Page 85 Line 7 HC Bill: Specifications of Benefit Levels for Plans. AARP members – your Health care WILL be rationed.

Page 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill: Medicaid Eligible Individuals will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.

Page 124 lines 24-25 HC: No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No “judicial review” against Govt Monopoly.

Page 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill: Doctors/ American Medical Association – The Govt will tell YOU what you can make! (salary)

Page 145 Line 15-17: An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE!

Page 126 Lines 22-25: Employers MUST pay for HC for part time employees AND their families.

Page 149 Lines 16-24: ANY Employer with payroll 401k & above who does not provide public option pays 8% tax on all payroll.

Page 150 Lines 9-13: Business’s with payroll btw 251k & 401k who doesn’t provide public option pays 2-6% tax on all payroll.

Page 167 Lines 18-23: ANY individual who doesn’t have acceptable HC according to Govt will be taxed 2.5% of income.

Page 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill: Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay)

Page 195 HC Bill: Officers & employees of HC Admin (GOVT) will have access to ALL Americans finances /personal records.

Page 203 Line 14-15 HC: “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax” Yes, it says that!

Page 239 Line 14-24 HC Bill: Govt will reduce physician services for Medicaid Seniors, low income and poor are affected.

Page 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill: Doctors, doesn’t matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same!

Page 253 Line 10-18: Govt sets value of Doctor’s time, proffession, judgment etc. Literally value of humans.

Page 265 Sec 1131: Govt mandates & controls productivity for private HC industries.

Page 268 Sec 1141: Federal Govt regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.

Page 272 SEC. 1145: TREATMENT OF CERTAIN CANCER HOSPITALS – Cancer patients – welcome to rationing!

Page 280 Sec 1151: The Govt will penalize hospitals for whatever Govt deems preventable re-admissions.

Page 298 Lines 9-11: Doctors, treat a patient during initial admission that results in a re-admission -Govt will penalize you.

Page 317 L 13-20: PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Govt tells Doctors what/how much they can own!

Page 317-318 lines 21-25, 1-3: PROHIBITION on expansion- Govt is mandating hospitals cannot expand.

Page 321 2-13: Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input is required. Can u say ACORN?!!

Page 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339: Govt mandates establishment of outcome based measures. HC the way they want. Rationing.

Page 341 Lines 3-9: Govt has authority to disqualify Medicare Advance Plans, HMOs, etc. Forcing people into Govt plan.

Page 354 Sec 1177: Govt will RESTRICT enrollment of Special needs people! Unbelievable!

Page 379 Sec 1191: Govt creates more bureaucracy – Tele-health Advisory Comittee. Can you say HC by phone?

Page 425 Lines 4-12: Govt mandates Advance Care Planning Consult. Think Senior Citizens end of life patients.

Page 425 Lines 17-19: Govt will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney. Mandatory!

Page 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3: Govt provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death. (assisted suicide)

Page 427 Lines 15-24: Govt mandates program for orders for end of life.. The Govt has a say in how your life ends.

Page 429 Lines 1-9: An “advanced care planning consultant” will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates.

Page 429 Lines 10-12: “advanced care consultation” may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOVT!

Page 429 Lines 13-25: The govt will specify which Doctors can write an end of life order.

Page 430 Lines 11-15: The Govt will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life!

Page 469: Community Based Home Medical Services = Non profit organizations. Hello, ACORN Medical Services here!!?

Page 472 Lines 14-17: PAYMENT TO COMMUNITY-BASED ORIGINATION. 1 monthly payment 2 a community-based organization. Like ACORN?

Page 489 Sec 1308: The Govt will cover Marriage & Family therapy. Which means they will insert Govt into your marriage.

Page 494-498: Govt will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, rationing those services.

Senator, I guarantee that I personally will do everything possible to inform patients and my fellow physicians about the dangers of the proposed bills you and your colleagues are debating.

Furthermore, If you vote for a bill that enforces socialized medicine on the country and destroys the doctor/patient relationship, I will do everything in my power to make sure you lose your job in the next election.

Respectfully,

Stephen E Fraser MD

Posted from the London Telegraph

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

Click here to read the rest of the story

Posted from the National Center for Policy Analysis

Since June 2009, President Obama has been losing the health care debate when the central contradiction of Obamacare was fatally exposed: from his first address to Congress, Obama insisted on the dire need for restructuring the health-care system because out-of-control costs were bankrupting the Treasury and wrecking the U.S. economy — yet the Democrats’ plans would make the problem worse, says Charles Krauthammer, of the Washington Post.

Accordingly, Democrats have trotted out various tax proposals to close the gap, all centered on prevention.   Prevention, Mr. Obama claims, will save lives and money.  Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom.  But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong.  Overall, preventive care increases medical costs, says Krauthammer.

This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO):

• In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA), CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: “researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.”
• For the individual, catching something early generally reduces later spending for that condition; but, explains Elmendorf, we don’t know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses.
• To avert one case, it’s usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients and this costs society money that would not have been spent otherwise.

However, this doesn’t’ mean we shouldn’t be preventing illness.  But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch.  The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment is simply nonsense.

Prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health-care costs, concludes Krauthammer.

Source:  Charles Krauthammer, “Obama’s Great ‘Prevention’ Savings Myth,” Washington Poster/Human Events, August 14, 2009

Read the full column at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/13/AR2009081302898.html?hpid=opinionsbox1