Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Press Conference President Obama Could Give


(Today’s Newt Gingrich Letter has been written with Nancy Desmond, CEO of the Center for Health Transformation.)

Last week, the Federal Reserve made a little noticed, but astonishing announcement. In addition to projecting unemployment over 10% in the coming months, they also projected no net new jobs over the next five years.

Let me repeat that to drive the point home: no net new jobs over the next five years.

This is an amazing and sober prediction about the health of our economy, one that should make every lawmaker pause and reassess the priorities of government.

In this environment, almost every decision for lawmakers should come down to one question: Since small businesses create ¾ of the jobs in America, would this piece of legislation create a better or worse environment for small business job creation?

It is in this context that tonight’s press conference with President Obama on health reform should be judged.

The Opportunity Buried in the Bad News

Until now, President Obama has more or less allowed Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies in the House to dictate the terms by which health reform would be accomplished.

Disappointingly, they have chosen an expensive, big-bureaucracy health care plan that would raise taxes on small businesses.

The reaction from moderate Democrats, Republicans, health professionals, indeed, from most Americans, has been growing opposition, and despite a massive majority in the House, it looks unlikely today that Speaker Pelosi can coerce this legislation through Congress like she did the energy tax.

As a result, President Obama could be stuck tonight trying to defend an indefensible piece of high tax legislation in the middle of a recession with growing unemployment and massive deficits. It’s a task that will be even more difficult in the wake of CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf’s recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee that the proposed legislation would actually increase the long term trajectory of federal spending in healthcare.

But what if President Obama used the announcement from the Federal Reserve to, in effect, start the health-reform debate over?

What if he said tonight, that given the continued trouble of our economy, he is asking Congress to go back to the drawing board to craft a pro-jobs, pro-growth, pro-reform health bill that would gain bipartisan support?

What would that bill look like?

A Pro Jobs, Pro Growth Plan for Health Reform


The fact is America desperately needs real change in our health and healthcare system. Americans are paying more and more money for less and less quality care.

At the Center for Health Transformation, we have been working for the past six years to develop solutions for the problems in our health care system, which don’t rely on higher taxes, bigger government, and more bureaucrats.

We believe we can have a system in which every American has access to better health with more choices at lower cost.

We believe we can have a system in which the individual and his or her doctor have the knowledge and incentives to make wise choices; a system in which fraud and waste are rooted out, in which quality and best practices (not volume of services) are rewarded and in which prevention, health and wellness are central.

And most importantly in today’s troubled economy, we believe we can have a system that will also be central to job creation and to America’s economic recovery.

Six Straightforward Steps to Better Healthcare

To create a system that delivers more choices of higher quality health care at lower cost we need to take the following six straightforward steps:
1. Stop Paying the Crooks. First, we must dramatically reduce healthcare fraud within our current healthcare system. Outright fraud -- criminal activity -- accounts for as much as 10 percent of all healthcare spending. That is more than $200 billion every year. Medicare alone could account for as much as $40 billion a year. (Please visit www.healthtransformation.net for the information about our latest CHT Press book, Stop Paying the Crooks, edited by Jim Frogue.)

2. Move from a Paper-based to an Electronic Health System. As it stands now, it is simply impossible to keep up with fraud in a paper-based system. An electronic system would free tens of billions of dollars to be spent on investing on the kind of modern system that will transform healthcare. In addition, it would dramatically increase our ability to eliminate costly medical errors and to accelerate the adoption of new solutions and breakthroughs.

3. Tax Reform. The savings realized through very deliberately and very systematically eliminating fraud could be used to provide tax incentives and vouchers that would help cover those Americans who currently can’t afford coverage. In addition, we need to expand tax incentives for insurance provided by small employers and the self-employed. Finally, elimination of capital gains taxes for investments in health-solution companies can greatly impact the creation advancement of new solutions that create better health at lower cost.

4. Create a Health-Based Health System. In essence, we must create a system that focuses on improving individual health. The best way to accomplish this is to find out what solutions are actually working today that save lives and save money and then design public policy to encourage their widespread adoption. For example, according to the Dartmouth Health Atlas, if the 6,000 hospitals in the country provided the same standard of care of the Intermountain or Mayo health clinics, Medicare alone would save 30 percent of total spending every year. We need to make best practices the minimum practice. We need the federal government and other healthcare stakeholders to consistently migrate to best practices that ensure quality, safety and better outcomes.

5. Reform Our Health Justice System. Currently, the U.S. civil justice system is the most expensive in the world -- about double the average cost in virtually every other industrialized nation. But for all of the money spent, our civil justice system neither effectively compensates persons injured from medical negligence nor encourages the elimination of medical errors. Because physicians fear malpractice suits, defensive medicine (redundant, wasteful treatment designed to avoid lawsuits, not treat the patient) has become pervasive. CHT is developing a number of bold health-justice reforms including a “safe harbor” for physicians who followed clinical best practices in the treatment of a patient. You can learn more at www.healthtransformation.net.

6. Invest in Scientific Research and Breakthroughs. We must accelerate and focus national efforts, re-engineer care delivery, and ultimately prevent diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease and diabetes which are financially crippling our healthcare system.
The Last Thing We Need is a Plan That Raises Taxes and Eliminates Jobs

Clearly, the last thing America needs is more taxes on job producers, whether it is in the form of a national energy tax, automatic tax increases in 2010 when the 2003 tax relief measures expire, or a healthcare plan that will raise taxes, eliminate jobs, and allows Washington bureaucrats to make decisions that ought to be made by individual Americans together with their families and doctors.

President Obama has a choice tonight, as does America.

We can make health and healthcare into a major source of job creation, economic revival, and improved health and well-being for every American.

Or we can make it into a government-run system that will destroy our economy along with our health.

To learn more about our plan for reforming health without raising taxes, eliminating jobs or raising the deficit, please visit www.healthtransformation.net.

Your friends,

Newt Gingrich and Nancy Desmond


Newt’s Quick Links


• A pro-jobs, pro-growth health reform plan is just one step towards getting our economy moving again. Today, American Solutions will hold a press conference to outline a “Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First” agenda for small business job creation. You can learn more at www.americansolutions.com.

• To see a recent historical example of how a pro-growth agenda can revitalize the American economy, watch Callista and my new movie, Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny.

• When some Americans noticed the glaring contrast between the mainstream media’s treatment of the death of pop singer Michael Jackson and the death of World War II hero Darrell “Shifty” Powers, they got together on the internet to do something about it. Powers was part of the “band of brothers” who landed in Normandy with the 101st Airborne on June 6, 1944 to help reclaim the European continent for freedom. He died June 17. To learn ways you can join in his memorial, go here.


Mr. Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works" and "Winning the Future" (published by Regnery, a HUMAN EVENTS sister company). Ms. Desmond is CEO of the Center for Health Transformation


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Limbaugh: 'Obama has yet to prove he's a citizen'

WND Exclusive

BORN IN THE USA?



Radio giant blasts president's refusal to show long-form birth certificate



By Chelsea Schilling


Top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh, upset that he's forced to report his every movement to tax authorities, blasted President Obama for failing to prove he is natural-born citizen of the United States.


On his show today, Limbaugh told listeners, "As you know, I'm in the midst of another harassing audit from New York State and New York City for the last three years. We're up to 16 different ways I have to prove to New York City and state tax authorities where I have been every day – not just work week – but every day, for the past three years."


He continued, "Barack Obama has yet to have to prove that he's a citizen. All he has to do is show a birth certificate. He has yet to have to prove he's a citizen. I have to show them 14 different ways where the h--- I am every day of the year for three years."


Demand the truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!


Later in the show, Limbaugh showed a video of a woman criticizing Rep. Mike Castle for ignoring the birth certificate issue during a Delaware town meeting. She presented her own birth certificate, signed by a doctor, and asked why Obama hasn't been compelled to do the same.


Woman: I want to go back to Jan. 20, and I want to know, why are you people ignoring his birth certificate? (cheers and applause) He is not an American citizen. He is a citizen of Kenya. I am American. My father worked – fought in World War II with the greatest generation in the Pacific theater for this country, and I don't want this flag to change. I want my country back! (cheers and applause)


Castle: If you're referring to the president there, he is a citizen of the United States. (crowd shouting)


Woman: All the men and women who died for this country in 1776 'til the present time. I think we should all stand up and give Pledge of Allegiance to that wonderful flag (cheers and applause) people that sacrificed their lives for our freedom. Everybody stand up.


Everyone in the room stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.


"The crowd went nuts," Limbaugh noted. "There's all kinds of stuff bubbling up out there."



Washington drops hammer on state gun plan


WND Exclusive

WEAPONS OF CHOICE



'As you may know, federal law … supersedes the act'



By Bob Unruh


Federal gun regulators have written to gun dealers around Tennessee, dropping the hammer on a new state law that exempts weapons made, sold and used inside the state from interstate regulations.


The letter, dated just days ago, was distributed to holders of Federal Firearms Licenses.


In it, Carson W. Carroll, the assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told dealers the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act, adopted this year, "purports to exempt personal firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition manufactured in the state, and which remain in the state, from most federal firearms laws and regulations."


The exemption is not right, the federal agency letter contends.


"As you may know, federal law requires a license to engage in the business of manufacturing firearms or ammunition, or to deal in firearms, even if the firearms or ammunition remain with the same state," the letter said. "All firearms manufactured by a licensee must be properly marked. Additionally, each licensee must record the type, model, caliber or gauge, and serial number of each firearm manufactured or otherwise acquired, and the date such manufacture or other acquisition was made.


"These, as well as other federal requirements and prohibitions, apply whether or not the firearms or ammunition have crossed state lines," the letter said.


Get "Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self-Defense" and learn why you have a responsibility to be armed.


The law was adopted by the state Legislature this year. It provides that "federal laws and regulations do not apply to personal firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition that is manufactured in Tennessee and remains in Tennessee." It also carries exemptions for certain types of weapons and ammunition and the requirement that all firearms made or sold in the state have "Made in Tennessee" on them.


Tennessee is not the first state to move in this direction. WND reported earlier that Utah was considering such a plan, and the state of Montana earlier adopted its own gun exemption procedure.



Montana statehouse

Montana's bill provides that guns, ammo, accessories, silencers and other products made, sold and used in the state would not require any federal documentation, registration, serial numbers, records check or waiting period.


The pushback from the states comes at a time when the federal administration is replete with anti-gun activists in influential positions, including an attorney general, Eric Holder, who supported a complete handgun ban in the District of Columbia before it was tossed by the U.S. Supreme Court.


The Obama administration has even pushed for a treaty that would require sportsmen who reload their ammunition to obtain a federal license.


The Montana plan cites the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that "guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution and reserves to the state and people of Montana certain powers as they were understood at the time that Montana was admitted to statehood in 1889."


"The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the state and people of Montana and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Montana and the United States in 1889," the Montana plan states.


"The regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under the 9th and 10th amendments to the United States Constitution, particularly if not expressly pre-empted by federal law. Congress has not expressly pre-empted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition," it says.


Further, state lawmakers cite the Second Amendment right of the people to "keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the time that Montana was admitted to statehood in 1889."


The Tennessee plan includes many of the same arguments.


The Tennessee Gun Owners website includes this comment: "And the battle begins. I don't believe this was unexpected. According to the 10th Amendment, the state has authority. Tennessee is applying its constitutional rights. The feds are saying, no, the Constitution doesn't count. Calling all lawyers!"


In Montana, a Democrat governor signed the gun exemption law; in Tennessee, a Democrat governor allowed the gun exemptions to become law without his signature.


At Resistnet.com, there was a discussion among hundreds of members who have stated their willingness to bring a lawsuit against the federal government over the issue.


"The sovereign state of Tennessee should stand her ground. If people would stand up to the bully (Big Brother) we might take back some of the rights that have been stolen from us. It will not be comfortable. It will not be easy. But, it can be done, if we want it bad enough," said one participant.

One other was a little less eloquent, but his message came through.


"This is a crock! This is a free state and it's time to tell the thieves in Washington to butt out."


The weapons definitions are part of a general move on the part of states – Alaska being the most recent – to simply declare their sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.


About three dozen states have begun working on such plans.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin signed House Joint Resolution just days ago. It "claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."


The joint resolution does not carry the force of law, but supporters say it is a significant move toward getting their message out to other lawmakers, the media and grassroots movements.


While seven states – Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska and Louisiana – have had both houses of their legislatures pass similar decrees, Palin signed Alaska's Tenth Amendment declaration and Tennessee's governor signed that state's Tenth Amendment declaration of sovereignty.