Thursday, August 6, 2009

Seven Ways to Make Health Care in America Better

By Herman Cain


My most recent column highlighted the massive ignorance about the U.S. health care system. Too many people want to fix the leaks in our health care roof by blowing up the building. Here’s a novel idea, let’s just fix the leaks in the roof, and here are seven solutions by Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute.

Pipes explains each solution in more detail in her book, The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care, but these brief explanations will make you more knowledgeable about solutions to our health care system than 90 percent of the voting public. Taken together, there would be no involuntary leaks in the roof.

Change the tax code. Level the playing field by allowing employees to have the same tax deductibility rules as employers, which would make it possible for the employees to buy employee-owned health insurance accounts. People would then make more prudent choices, because it would be their money and not their employer’s money.

Reduce costly government mandates and regulations. Just look at Medicare and Medicaid. The more the government tries to control costs with mandates and regulations, the more costs go up and the quality of care goes down.

Allow the purchase of insurance across state lines. This one is more controversial, because the states are vastly different concerning mandated coverage and insurance regulations. But it is worth exploring for the sake of enhanced competition.

Expand Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). These accounts are available at most banks and allow you to save money tax-free for current and future health care expenses. But as usual, the government has set stupid limitations and regulations that discourage their use. One of the best features of the HSA is that money not spent from the account in a given year can be carried over to accumulate an emergency health care fund that you control. Imagine that. You control the money and not the government!

Support Retail Health Clinics. Wal-Mart and Target are opening health clinics in many of their stores. They are doing it despite some opposition from state bureaucrats and objections from some health professionals. These clinics are not hospitals, but they provide convenient and affordable basic services to millions of people. The clinics are staffed with medical professionals, and of course these retailers know that most people will fill their prescriptions in their stores and pick up some other items before they leave. So what?

Implement Tort Reform. When it costs doctors an average of $250,000 for malpractice insurance, something is wrong. This is driving a lot of doctors away from medicine and out of small towns that cannot generate this kind of medical ante. People's legal rights need to be protected, but not to the extent that it eliminates health care in some areas altogether.

Provide Vouchers for the Working Poor and Chronically Ill. Brilliant! It is the same principle as providing food stamps for the people who need help buying food. Just like we would not ration food to make sure we feed the poor, we should not ration health care to take care of those who do not have it. Fix the "leaks” in the roof.

Every nation that has gone the route of socialized medicine has made access, cost and quality of care worse. We have an opportunity to get it right. Then why are the Democrats in Congress and the Obama Administration determined to take the U.S. in the same direction?

It’s not about health care, it’s about control.

Center For Health Transformation

Healthcare Fix Must Encompass Litigation Reform

As the president and Congress debate how to fix what’s broken in America’s healthcare system, it is critical that civil justice reform be included in the discussion.

The U.S. civil justice system is the most expensive in the world, about double the average cost of virtually any other industrialized nation. But for all of the money spent, our civil justice system neither effectively compensates injured parties (less than 15 cents of every tort-cost dollar goes to those injured from medical negligence) nor encourages the elimination of medical errors.

Watch Jeffrey Segal, M.D., J.D.(CEO and Founder of Medical Justice Services, Inc.) discuss this issue on Lou Dobbs at 7:30 pm Eastern August 6 on CNN

Read HR 3372, the Health Care OverUse Reform Act (HealthCOURT Act)

Unplugged: Are Town Hall Protests "Manufactured"?

Posted by Michelle Levi


Democratic National Committee's press secretary Hari Sevugan said nationwide protests of democratic health care town hall events were "manufactured outrage " today on "Washington Unplugged."

Sevugan debated Max Pappas from Freedomworks.com on the show.

"We are very flattered at the idea that we could gin up this many people with this level of excitement. But you can't gin that up," Pappas said. "This only happens when people are really concerned."

Sevugan acknowledged that there is real concern over health care, "but what is not helping is sort of the venomous, angry yelling and screaming that we are seeing at these town halls."

"I think a lot of the events that you are seeing here are manufactured outrage," Sevugan said.

"Perception is reality," Politico's Josh Kraushaar explained in an earlier segment. "When you see images of angry and concerned constituents and protests…that is a bad image for the administration to be seeing."

Kraushaar said that regions where these protests have occurred since the weekend are actually very Democratic and polls have indicated that people there support the president's health care plan.

"The notion that there is a grassroots activism in those areas is somewhat unlikely. It suggests that you are seeing the pressure of outside groups," he said.

He also noted that at the same time, response from local Democrats is unexpectedly low.

President Obama: Americans Spy On Americans

FOX NEWS

By Kevin McCullough


What concern is it to the president or his administration if private citizens have disagreements, discussions, and dissections of his proposed take over of the health care industry?

So what has the White House told supporters to do when you run across those who spread “disinformation” about the new attempt by the Obama administration to install the anti-competitive practices of a “public option” into a federalized universal health care initiative?

Report them.

Whether its communicated through e-mail, web sites, blogs, or even casual conversation the executive branch of the federal government is asking you to make them aware of this “disinformation” because they can’t keep track of all of the dissenters themselves.

From Tuesday’s White House blog entry:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Pardon me for asking such an obvious question, but what concern is it to the president or his administration if private citizens have disagreements, discussions, and dissections of his proposed take over of the health care industry?

Last I checked I had the constitutional right to do so.

But now he wishes to turn one citizen against another?

At dozens of the town hall meetings taking place back in individual districts this month, numbers of reports have surfaced that ACORN members have taken to publicly berating normal citizens who are simply there to ask the questions they have about the viability of a plan that requires the government to spend an additional $1,000,000,000 dollars. They wonder this especially when 85% of people in America are satisfied and content with the health insurance system they’ve already chosen to engage.

So what’s the answer to good old fashioned grass roots voters actually being engaged with their representatives in Congress while they’re home during the August break?

The White House believes it’s best to intimidate and silence, or at the bare minimum — report.

The mistake this White House continues to make, seemingly on a daily basis, is that they reveal very much what they truly think of freedoms of the American political process.

Being generous, we can conclude it’s not a very high opinion.

When President George W. Bush was being stalked by Cindy Sheehan and Code Pink on a daily basis, over a genuine issue of national security — the War on Terror — he met with Sheehan, acknowledged her pain, and wished her well, all while respectfully disagreeing with her over the policy.

By contrast, when more than 2,800 tea parties took place on April 15 and more than 1.5 million people turned out, President Obama showed these folks the back of his hand and insisted on marginalizing those who sought his attention on a fundamental issue of his job performance.

And now he’s asking you to report those who disagree with him to his newly crafted e-mail address.

There could likely be many good reasons for the White House to set up an e-mail address “flag@whitehouse.gov.” — Like reporting a suspicious truck parked in a place it’s not supposed to be. Or the systematic movement of people that seek to attack the nation. Or even a suspicious piece of baggage that should not be left unaccompanied.

But reporting your neighbors for simply disagreeing on the unknown outcomes of a federally controlled, centralized universal governmental control of health care is not an acceptable use of such an effort.

Perhaps it would be different if we felt the administration was dealing with us honestly. At this point, they’ve all but admitted that they will have to raise taxes on the middle class. That cheery news, coupled with catching significant personalities on video–i.e. Barney Frank, Jan Schikowski, and President Obama — all opining about their desire for a new “public option” to lead to a single payer system, gives the nation pause and little confidence to think that what the president says at prime time press conferences is genuine.

So what should our response be?

Greater demands for free speech…

Louder volumes at town hall meetings…

Bigger belligerence the tighter they squeeze…

In short, when free speech is threatened, screeching screams of volition are the only thing preventing the mandated, manhandled, chokehold of silence.

So go ahead… report me… I will shout louder!

Kevin McCullough is the nationally syndicated host of “‘Xtreme’ Radio” now heard on 197 stations and columnist based in New York. He blogs at www.muscleheadrevolution.com. His second book “The Kind Of MAN Every Man SHOULD Be” is in stores now.

Source: Fox News


Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think? dan@goldcoastchronicle.com

Where's the evidence?

JOSEPH FARAH
Between the Lines


The cacophony is growing.

There is a din of media outrage being expressed.

Pundits and talking heads are losing their heads – not to mention their cool.

Over what?

It's not health care.

It's not cap and trade.

It's not even whether Barack Obama thinks black people are always right and cops are always wrong.

It's whether the man sitting in the White House for the last six months is constitutionally eligible.

About three months ago, some of you will remember, I set out to make this happen. I launched a billboard campaign with just this goal in mind – raising the visibility of the story, which had been all but forgotten because of the bailouts, the stimulus packages and the government grab for power under the new regime.

"Where's the birth certificate?" was the campaign. Many of you criticized me for the choice of words. Yet, you bought up the bumper stickers by the tens of thousands. You erected the yard signs and held up the rally signs at tea parties. And you supported the billboard effort with financial contributions.

Do you recognize what has happened in such a short time?

You've made this an issue!

This is why everyone can't stop talking about the "non-issue" of the birth certificate.

One day Hawaii officials swear they inspected it. The next day, they deny it even exists.

One day the hospital where Obama claims to have been born is sporting a letter to that effect. The next day the letter disappears and the hospital won't confirm his birth there.

One day the official gatekeepers of the non-story insist he was born in one hospital. The next day they say it was a different hospital.

None of this is supposed to worry us.

We're just supposed to go along with the changing facts and accept that a higher authority has determined the truth for us.

One thing that is severely lacking in all this late discussion of the "non-issue" – where's the evidence?

It's a simple question. Where's the answer?

I was interviewed by a big magazine this week. One of the questions I faced was: Where's the evidence for my position?

My position is that Barack Obama has not proven his eligibility. The evidence for that is quite simple and self-evident – he hasn't. If he has, please show me.

His "evidence" is a document that could never and will never suffice. It's called a certification of live birth. It is not a birth certificate. It does not prove even the first question we ask for proof of natural born citizenship: Was the subject born in the United States?

It wasn't just possible to obtain such a document having been born outside the country, it was actually quite easy. All it would take was the word of one parent. The secondary evidence they point to are newspaper birth announcements. And how were these generated? They were generated by public health departments who distributed them to newspapers whenever a certification of live birth was issued. So that is no evidence whatsoever.

The only other evidence we have is Barack Obama's word. And since he was too young to know where he was born, that, too, is no evidence whatsoever.

Once again, I am not making accusations about where Obama was born. All I am saying is that he is without question hiding something by not producing a real birth certificate – one that bears a signature of a physician and the name of a hospital where that birth took place.

He is hiding something. And I think I have proved that.

It's not my job to prove he was born elsewhere. It's Obama's job to prove he is a natural born citizen. If he has any respect for the U.S. Constitution he swore to uphold, he would have done that by now – if he can.

Every day he delays doing that, the suspicion will only grow.

No, this is not a "dead story," as the president of CNN pronounces. It is very much alive. It is getting bigger every day. And, yes, I am proud of the part I played in making that true.

Kathleen Sebelius: Don't Sweat the Details

by Cal Thomas


Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote an op-ed column for The Washington Post on Tuesday in defense of the Obama administration's efforts to "reform" health care. She wrote: "President Obama and I are working closely with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and health care experts to make sure we get the details of health reform right. But we can't let the details distract us from the huge benefits that reform will bring."

So, the objective is all that matters, not the process by which we get there? The most important words on a contract may be in the small print. Secretary Sebelius tells us not to worry about such things, but trust your government leaders and anonymous "experts" and leave the rest to us. A growing number of Americans are saying "no thanks."

The details matter because they are about government deciding who gets treatment when they are sick and who does not, who lives and who dies. Are there any details more important than that? Why would anyone trust government with their health and life when there are so many things government already does poorly and inefficiently?

Sebelius and members of Congress are fanning out across the country, trying to defend a health care reform plan that is only partially written, unexplainable and still unread by many representatives and senators. In a joint appearance with Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, Sebelius responded to shouts and catcalls from a skeptical audience at the Constitution Center in heavily Democratic Philadelphia. She said Specter shouldn't be criticized because the Senate's version of the bill has not yet been written. This takes hubris to a new level. It is one thing for a member of Congress to vote on legislation he hasn't read; it is quite another for government officials to ask for support of a bill that has not been written, at least in the Senate.

The attitude of the administration and supporters of its health care plan seems to be: "Take your medicine, and if you don't like it, or question its effectiveness, you will be sent to your room as punishment because we know better than you, even though 86 percent of you are perfectly happy with the health care you have now. Who are you to question us and our 'experts'?"

The more the public learns what is in the House bill, the less they like it. That's why the administration wants to rush this through Congress. The public mostly understands the need to reform the increasingly expensive current system. It just doesn't like the administration's plan.

There are other proposals that would achieve the end of reform while preserving the high-quality treatment that is the envy of the world and simultaneously affirming deeply held American values. It is no mystery what needs to be done to reduce costs and improve health delivery services.

As Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, has noted, "Americans want lower health care costs, not a government-run system. And there are several reforms we can do immediately to lower costs that won't cost a dime, (such as) allowing insurers to compete across state lines, requiring doctors and hospitals to post their rates and results to allow consumers to shop around, and creating one standardized reimbursement form for all insurers." Allowing employees to choose among several insurance policies (a choice available to federal workers, including Congress) would let individuals tailor policies to their needs, instead of forcing them to accept a one-size-fits-all policy. That, too, would reduce costs.

A grassroots uprising defeated the Bush administration's ill-conceived attempts at "comprehensive immigration reform." The groundswell against nationalized health care may have a similar end. If the liberal Democratic congressional leadership forces a bill through anyway, Republicans may have the issue they have been looking for to help them take back at least the House of Representatives in the 2010 election and to stop this "risky scheme" and other "out of the mainstream" programs.

The Cap and Tax Fiction

REVIEW & OUTLOOK - Wall Street Journal

Democrats off-loading economics to pass climate change bill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.

Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership's solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics.

Their gambit got a boost this week, when the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman's co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless.

For starters, the CBO estimate is a one-year snapshot of taxes that will extend to infinity. Under a cap-and-trade system, government sets a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally; companies then buy or sell permits to emit CO2. The cap gets cranked down over time to reduce total carbon emissions.

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.

The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap."

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn't take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others -- manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families.

Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.

The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain's Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years.

Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality.