Cartoon by Gary Varvel as found on Townhall.com 9/9/09GOVERNMENTAL MALPRACTICE
Last evening in the President’s speech to the joint session of Congress clarified very little for me in regard to the Democrat’s Health Care Reform proposal or ObamaCare for short. His invocation to the 'sainted' Senator Edward Kennedy’s passionate pursuit of socialistic health care reform until the bitter end, did not sway me one iota. The President’s repeat of his promise that his health care reform would not add to the deficit and that it would ONLY cost $900 billion was laughable. I have heard much higher estimates.
I gathered that he would pay for the health care through driving fraud and abuse from the Medicare Program . . . and other details still to be worked out. He said that he would not ration Medicare. He said he would protect Medicare.
The President lied when he said that healthcare WAS our deficit problem. No, wasteful government spending – including TARP, the bailouts, the stimulus package, the bloated federal budget, the ridiculous Cap and Trade bill, and now ObamaCare – are the real causes of the ratcheted increases in our deficit. He, more than healthcare costs, is the primary reason for our increasing deficit.
The President lied when he said that his healthcare reform was not a government takeover of healthcare, 1/6 of our economy. He claimed his intent was not to put insurance companies out of business, but that he just wanted to hold insurance companies accountable. I ask then, who will hold the President and Congress accountable for the wasteful out of control spending?
I do not believe the President when he said that there will be no insurance coverage provided for illegal aliens. A great number of members of Congress groaned in disagreement at the assertion that illegal aliens will not be covered.
I do not believe the President when he said that no federal money will be used to pay for abortions. This is a technicality, somehow, somewhat those abortions will be paid for – maybe by private premiums.
The President said that federal conscience clauses to protect healthcare workers from having to assist in morally reprehensible procedures. Isn’t his administration working to negate or overturn the George W. Bush executive order establishing protection for the conscience clause?
The President stated that those opposed to reform would do so at any cost. We who oppose ObamaCare do not oppose healthcare system reform, we oppose the ObamaCare, government-run, Universal Healthcare, Single Payor, Socialized Medicine approach to reform!
The President accused Governor Sarah Palin assertion that ObamaCare would create Death Panels for allocating care to the elderly, if not my name, by implication that ObamaCare would not establish death panel or healthcare rationing. Healthcare will be rationed and the elderly will be short-changed under ObamaCare.
The President said that he would not sign any healthcare reform plan that would add to the deficit. Then he is either lying or has misjudged the cost of ObamaCare with its public healthcare insurance option.
Again the President calls anyone opposing ObamaCare ‘special interests.” He is calling the majority of Americans ‘special interests’.
MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
In what appeared to me to be a bone thrown toward the Republicans, the president said that he has instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to begin immediately to pursue Medical Malpractice Reform pilot projects. This was the single responsible thing that the President said in his speech last His in evening. The rest was merely a regurgitation of HB 3200, American’s Affordable Health Care Plan.
Here is an email I sent to radically liberal Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in regard to medical malpractice insurance:
Last evening in the President’s speech to the joint session of Congress clarified very little for me in regard to the Democrat’s Health Care Reform proposal or ObamaCare for short. His invocation to the 'sainted' Senator Edward Kennedy’s passionate pursuit of socialistic health care reform until the bitter end, did not sway me one iota. The President’s repeat of his promise that his health care reform would not add to the deficit and that it would ONLY cost $900 billion was laughable. I have heard much higher estimates.
I gathered that he would pay for the health care through driving fraud and abuse from the Medicare Program . . . and other details still to be worked out. He said that he would not ration Medicare. He said he would protect Medicare.
The President lied when he said that healthcare WAS our deficit problem. No, wasteful government spending – including TARP, the bailouts, the stimulus package, the bloated federal budget, the ridiculous Cap and Trade bill, and now ObamaCare – are the real causes of the ratcheted increases in our deficit. He, more than healthcare costs, is the primary reason for our increasing deficit.
The President lied when he said that his healthcare reform was not a government takeover of healthcare, 1/6 of our economy. He claimed his intent was not to put insurance companies out of business, but that he just wanted to hold insurance companies accountable. I ask then, who will hold the President and Congress accountable for the wasteful out of control spending?
I do not believe the President when he said that there will be no insurance coverage provided for illegal aliens. A great number of members of Congress groaned in disagreement at the assertion that illegal aliens will not be covered.
I do not believe the President when he said that no federal money will be used to pay for abortions. This is a technicality, somehow, somewhat those abortions will be paid for – maybe by private premiums.
The President said that federal conscience clauses to protect healthcare workers from having to assist in morally reprehensible procedures. Isn’t his administration working to negate or overturn the George W. Bush executive order establishing protection for the conscience clause?
The President stated that those opposed to reform would do so at any cost. We who oppose ObamaCare do not oppose healthcare system reform, we oppose the ObamaCare, government-run, Universal Healthcare, Single Payor, Socialized Medicine approach to reform!
The President accused Governor Sarah Palin assertion that ObamaCare would create Death Panels for allocating care to the elderly, if not my name, by implication that ObamaCare would not establish death panel or healthcare rationing. Healthcare will be rationed and the elderly will be short-changed under ObamaCare.
The President said that he would not sign any healthcare reform plan that would add to the deficit. Then he is either lying or has misjudged the cost of ObamaCare with its public healthcare insurance option.
Again the President calls anyone opposing ObamaCare ‘special interests.” He is calling the majority of Americans ‘special interests’.
MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
In what appeared to me to be a bone thrown toward the Republicans, the president said that he has instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to begin immediately to pursue Medical Malpractice Reform pilot projects. This was the single responsible thing that the President said in his speech last His in evening. The rest was merely a regurgitation of HB 3200, American’s Affordable Health Care Plan.
Here is an email I sent to radically liberal Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in regard to medical malpractice insurance:
Thank you for the opportunity to ask you a question regarding health care reform on your Electronic Town Hall to be held on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 from 6:30 -7:15 PM.
Last evening, in the President’s address to the Joint Session of the House and Senate, he seemed to acknowledge the fact and the need to reform medical malpractice insurance.
Do you agree with the need to significantly reform medical liability and to deter junk lawsuits and to put a cap on awards – in order to reduce the cost of healthcare through exorbitant medical malpractice premiums that many physicians have to pay today – and is what drives more and more physicians from the practice of medicine?
This had previously been an area none of the Democratic proposals seemed to address.
The MSM chewed out Mike Pence for overestimating the cost of the Obama plan at $800 billion!
ReplyDeleteTARP and the bailouts were just as much the fault of the Republicans as Obama. And you can't blame Cap and Trade for the economic dip either because it hasn't passed yet! Even the economic stimulus bill isn't much of a reason because most of the money hasn't been spent yet. The reason why the economy is in the tank is because of all the waste that already existed even before Obama took office. The 2001-2006 Republican congresses not only wasted a chance to scale back the welfare state, but expanded it as well as providing us with the cost of a warfare state.
As far as the illegal aliens issue, there is supposedly a regulation in the bill which disallows any illegal alien from collecting benefits from this plan. But the criticism from the Republicans is that there is no provision for enforcing this regulation. They are probably right about this, but what did THEY do to stop illegals from collecting SS, Medicare, and educational benefits or from coming into the country in the first place? (On that last count, the Congress did, but Bush blocked its implementation.)
I had a feeling that the final bill would not be "public option". This would drive the insurance companies out of business too soon. Obama is beholden to the corporate interests and he's really up to going for more regulations which will make it harder to compete with the big guys, not to put them out of business. But maybe there will be just enough pain on them to necessitate a series of insurance company bailouts.
Medical malpractice claims are a very small part of the problem, in my opinion.