Healthcare Reform of Titanic Proportions

Please--Write Your Senator TODAY

I'd much rather be quietly celebrating the holidays with my family--but this issue is much to important to let slip by through Congress. My heart sinks at the thought that the Senate will pass the health care reform bill, over the objection of the majority of the people in the United States. What hubris motivates the Democrats in the Senate? Their strident support seems only to increase as the polls show plummeting support for this bill. Like children, unable to admit a mistake, they plunge us headlong toward fiscal and political disaster.

Please take time TODAY to write to your senators and express revulsion at the health care bill in general, and the individual mandate in particular.

Below is from an email I received from AAPS, followed by email I sent to my Senators. Feel free to use it.

Other talking points are available through AAPS (especially their series on health care myths) or from FIRM.

From AAPS:

There are two more chances to kill the healthcare bill in the Senate tomorrow, so more action is needed.

First, there will be a vote on the constitutionality.

Second, will be the final cloture vote around 2 pm before proceeding to the final vote on the bill, which is now scheduled for 8 am Christmas Eve. Votes needed for cloture are 60. Today, Sen. Barrasso, M.D. (R-WY) talked about John F. Kennedy’s book, “Profiles in Courage” and said that we need one Democrat to exhibit courage and stand up and say that this is a bad bill, and that these sweetheart deals are unfair. Maybe we can convince Ben Nelson (D-NE) to go back to his previous courageous stand against the bill.

TWO ACTIONS BEFORE WED NOON EST:

1. Write a letter to Sen. Ben Nelson expressing your position on his flip-flop. If you intend to help any opponent he may have in his re-election, you might mention that in your letter.

We will deliver the letters to Sen. Nelson’s office before the vote tomorrow.

An easy form is posted on www.TakeBackMedicine.com

2. Contact your Senators to tell them to vote that the bill is unconstitutional, largely due to the individual mandate. You can find your Senators' contact information at http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE TO DESPISE

Two big announcements from groups on the left today grabbed our attention.

The self-acknowledged government single-payer doctors from Physicians for a National Health Plan wrote to Senators:

"We have concluded that the Senate bill's passage would bring more harm than good."

The negatives, the group says, “include the individual mandate requiring that people buy private insurance policies, large government subsidies to private insurers, the unfair taxing of high-cost health plans, and cuts of $43 billion in Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals.”

And MoveOn.org put out a list of “5 Critical Flaws in the Senate Healthcare Bill” including: #4: Tax American workers' health coverage to pay for reform.

CONSTITUTIONALITY

Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and John Ensign (R-Nevada), raised a Constitutional Point of Order on the Senate floor against the Democrat health care takeover bill on behalf of the Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators. The Senate will vote tomorrow on the bill’s constitutionality.

Further, during our “Virtual Vigil” webcast Sunday night, national radio talk show host, Mike Siegel, who is an attorney, explained that the bill violates a basic legal concept of “breadth.”

PROCEDURAL ARROGANCE

Once again, the Senate leadership is ignoring its own rules.

It’s complex, but the net effect is that Sen. Harry Reid inserted language into the health care legislation changing the Senate rules so that internally the Senate must have two-thirds of the Senate in agreement to consider any future amendments to Obamacare on the floor. Oh, the Senate is actually supposed to vote on rules changes.

Dear Senator,

Please consider carefully before you vote on the current health care reform bill.

An individual mandate is a disaster to our freedom and will not make medical care more available or more affordable.

The experience in Massachusetts should make clear that mandating insurance coverage only serves to increase public debt and decrease the actual availability of medical care. Health insurance coverage is not the same as medical care. This bill will force the use of price controls and rationing--the antithesis of freedom and the end to quality medical care.

I know you have worked very hard to try and construct a health care reform bill---but this bill will not solve the problems that you hope it will and IT DOES NOT HAVE THE SUPPORT OF THE POPULACE!

Please vote NO.

Public Option and Individual Mandate BOTH Destroy Real Choice

Thanks to 3 Ring Binder for posting this. It's short, to the point and spot on.



Hopefully, the public option is dead. This is not really much cause for celebration, however, as long as the individual mandate is alive and well.

A mandate would make it illegal to not have health insurance coverage--which is just a sneakier way of accomplishing the same damn thing as a public option. If you have to purchase health insurance BY LAW, then the law will have to define just what constitutes "health insurance". What better way to surreptitiously open the door to full and total control of medical care?

The ability to decide what must or will not be paid for by a legally mandated insurance program is the ability to decide what medical care will be purchased.

In addition, if either a requirement for community rating, or outlawing the ability to exclude pre-existing conditions end up as part of the reform, it will be the death knell of financially viable private insurance.

And then we will be back to the public "option"---and a choice of one, is no choice at all.



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Copenhagen Central Planners Fail at Planning

Environmentalists gathered to attend the global warming conference in Copenhagen, only to find out that the organization they are hoping will control the weather and plan for all our energy needs can't even properly organize their meeting.

The UN chose to hold what was billed as “the most important meeting in the history of the world” in a conference center that only holds fifteen thousand people. The environmental NGOs sent lists of delegates that added up to over thirty thousand. The UN looked at these two numbers and decided everything would work out fine...

On Tuesday, it was announced that only 1,000 NGO delegates would be allowed to attend on Thursday and Friday and that the method for choosing the lucky few would be announced later in the day. A notice was posted that said the decision would be made by 6 PM. At 6, another notice said come back at 7. At 7, we were told that NGO representatives would meet with Yvo De Boer, the head of the Secretariat, at 7:30 and to watch our e-mails for an announcement of when we would meet. At 7:45, we were told to assemble at 8 to find out which lucky thousand would be allowed to attend the last two days of the conference. At 8, the meeting with Mr. de Boer was still going on. So we sat and waited. Ditto 8:30. Ditto 9. At 9:35, our NGO representatives appeared...

Then the NGO representative told us that UN security had advised Mr. de Boer that no NGO delegates should be allowed to attend the last two days, when over one hundred prime ministers and presidents, including President Obama, would be in the building. But de Boer had insisted on the rights of “civil society” to be represented and had secured a compromise. Instead of a thousand passes for NGOs, there would be three hundred.

Thus the approximately thirty thousand NGO delegates who traveled from around the world to Copenhagen to attend COP-15 were limited to seven thousand on Tuesday and Wednesday and to three hundred for the last two days.

Perhaps some individuals who support efforts at a world-government takeover of energy production and use do so with good, although mistaken, intentions. However, it is difficult to understand how can anyone with even a modicum of honesty and historical knowledge can fail to understand the enormous hubris of such a central planning effort.


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Pure Self-Interest Promotes Energy Efficiency

from Carpe Diem.

Bottom Line: These significant increases in energy efficiency for both our homes in general and also for the appliances that we have in our homes have happened gradually, but steadily, for many decades, and many of these improvements in energy efficiency probably took place without any government intervention, stimulus or rebate programs. The incentive to save money ensures that there will always be an incentive to become more energy efficient out of pure self-interest, since increased energy efficiency translates directly into monetary gain.

Listening to Obama, one might get the impression that we have become less and less energy efficient over time, and we energy gluttons now need nanny state hectoring to become energy misers. The truth is just the opposite - we have become more and more energy efficient over time, not less.